ABSTRACT
For good reason, research into the history of human genetics has concentrated on medical genetics, eugenics and radiation genetics. The entanglement of research into heritable pathologies with discriminatory political and social practices has rendered human genetics a deeply problematic scientific field. Thus, when addressing the post-war era, historians have focused on the repercussions and continuities of human geneticists’ interest in pathological conditions. 1 By the same token, however, human geneticists’ interest in the inheritance and variation of normal traits has largely been neglected.
