The Sawyier Philosophy Lecture on Science, Technology, and Society

Robert J. Richards, Morris Fishbein Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Chicago, will be presenting a talk titled "The Beauty of the Georgian Female’s Skull: Measures of Racial Classification in the 19th Century."

At the turn of the 19th century skulls were measured using different metrics to discriminate the mental and psychological characteristics of the different races. One measure was the beauty of the skull. What justifies the several measures, especially that of beauty?