Race, Genetics, and Science: Resisting Racism in the 1930s

Race, Genetics, and Science, a collection of writings by Hugo Iltis, renowned biographer of the father of genetics Gregor Mendel (1924, English trans. 1932), is extraordinarily timely and of great interest to today’s world. Writing in the 1930s, at the height of Nazi Germany’s rise to power, Iltis used his extensive knowledge of Mendelian genetics to dismantle the “intellectual poison gas” being disseminated by Nazi theorists. His courage in standing up to the false science used to justify torture and death inflicted on people of Jewish ancestry caught the attention of none other than Albert Einstein. Einstein assisted in arranging Iltis’s escape from Czechoslovakia a few months before the Nazi takeover of the country in March, 1939. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned about combating rising racism in today’s politics, science, and governance.