Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 Harry Hamilton Laughlin (March 11, 1880 – January 26, 1943) was an American educator and eugenicist.

In 1910, Davenport asked Laughlin to move to Long Island, New York, to serve as the superintendent of his new research office.

[1] The Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was founded at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, by Davenport with initial support from Mary Williamson Averell (Mrs. E. H. Harriman) and John Harvey Kellogg, and later by the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

[2] Laughlin was appointed as managing director and pursued the goals of the institution, even co-writing a eugenical comedy in four acts for performance at the ERO for the amusement of field workers being trained.

Laughlin provided extensive statistical testimony to the United States Congress in support of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924.

For instance, Laughlin asserted that various forms of "degeneracy" were innate to certain racial groups of recent immigrants by looking at populations in asylums and homes for the disabled.

In his study of this, Laughlin deduced that much of the state sterilization legislation was poorly worded, leaving it open to questions of constitutionality and confusion over bureaucratic responsibility.

The first person ordered sterilized in Virginia under the new law was Carrie Buck, on the grounds that she was a "probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring.

The Reichstag of Nazi Germany passed the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring in 1933, closely based on Laughlin's model.

Laughlin was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Heidelberg in 1936 for his work on behalf of the "science of racial cleansing.

One of the first projects that Laughlin pursued for the Fund was the distribution of two films from Germany depicting the success of eugenics programs in that country.

Laughlin lobbied to keep immigration barriers enforced during the Nazi Holocaust, preventing Jews from reaching safety in the United States.

Many leading internationalists expressed interest in Laughlin's world government plan; these included Edward M. House, Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy adviser.