Robert DeCourcy Ward

Robert DeCourcy Ward (November 29, 1867 – November 12, 1931) was an American climatologist, author, educator and leading eugenics and immigration reform advocate in the early 20th Century. He became the first ever professor of climatology in the United States and made contributions to the study of the climate. His advocacy for immigration reform and eugenics led him to

co-found the Immigration Restriction League which was instrumental in the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 which reduced Jewish and Italian immigration to the U.S. by over 95% and completely barred Asian immigration until 1952.

Biography

Born on November 29, 1867, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Henry Veazey Ward and Anna Saltonstall (Merrill), he matriculated to Harvard University in 1885, where he received an A.B. in 1889. After graduation, he spent a year traveling through Europe. He joined the meteorology staff of Harvard University in 1890 as an assistant to William Morris Davis, later becoming an instructor in meteorology, then in climatology. Beginning in 1892, he served as editor of the American Meteorological Journal, a post he would hold until 1896 when it ceased publication. In Harvard graduate school, he studied meteorology for two years and was awarded an A.M. in 1893.

In 1894, he helped to co-found the Immigration Restriction League, a group of fellow Bostonians who were opposed to the growing influx of "undesirable immigrants". In his early writings, Ward noted that immigrants should not be excluded "on the ground of race, religion, or creed", but the group were concerned about the supposed deterioration in the quality of immigration and sought changes to the immigration laws. Ward served as a member of the group's executive committee until 1908. In the following years, he developed an interest in the then-new theory of eugenics and wrote several works on the subject. In 1913, he urged that the principles of eugenics be applied to immigrants, thereby denying entry to undesirable aliens on the basis of their physical, mental, or economic qualities.