The term eugenics, meaning "well born," was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a scientist at University College in London. Galton's conception of eugenics had arisen from his earlier study, Hereditary Genius (1869), in which he used data from biographical dictionaries and alumni records at Oxford and Cambridge Universities to construct pedigrees of leading English families. He concluded that superior intelligence and abilities were inherited with an efficiency of about 20% among primary relatives in these families. (DNAi location: Chronicle > Threat of the Unfit > Founders)

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