Cyril Dean Darlington FRS[1] (19 December 1903 – 26 March 1981) was an English biologist, cytologist, geneticist, and eugenicist.
[3] However, many of his views are controversial; Darlington was listed in 1999 by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an example of a prominent race scientist who espoused antisemitism, eugenics, racism, and social Darwinism.
[8] Darlington's interest in the subject began after he discovered Thomas Hunt Morgan's The Physical Basis of Heredity.
Darlington published his first scientific paper on the tetraploidy of the sour cherry and was hired as a permanent employee.
In February 1929 he made a study trip with fellow botanist John Macqueen Cowan to the Near East.
[citation needed] He continued to voice support for the belief that human genetics determined behaviour.
In 1972 he, along with 50 other scientists, signed "Resolution on Scientific Freedom Regarding Human Behavior and Heredity" in which a genetic approach to understanding the behaviour of man was strongly defended.
He staunchly defended his colleague, John Baker, who published the controversial book Race in 1974, in the fight against Lysenkoism.
In his later years, Darlington increased his participation in the public debate about the role of science in society, and especially its interaction with politics and government.
Beginning in 1948, he published strong condemnations of the denouncement of Mendelian genetics in favour of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union.
These events caused an upheaval among the leaders of genetics in the west, many of whom were leftist, socialists, communists, and Marxists.
Darlington thought that there might be a biological justification to prohibit interracial marriages "if intermarriage were not contrary to the habits of all stable communities and therefore in no need of discouragement."
[citation needed] He refused to sign the revised 1951 statement which conceded that racial differences in intelligence possibly existed.