Robert Bennet Bean
Robert Bennett Bean was an associate professor of anatomy and ethnologist at the University of Virginia. His work concentrated on the concept of race and eugenics.[1]
Early Life
Bean was born in 1874 in Botetourt County, Virginia. Bean’s family had strong roots in Virginia and Maryland. His mother was descended from Thomas Jefferson and his father fought in the Army of Northern Virginia as an artillery lieutenant during the Civil War. Bean graduated from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1900. He graduated from the John Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1904 and later became an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. Bean then journeyed to Manila where he would run the anatomical laboratory at the Philippines medical school. In 1910, he came back to the United States as a professor in anatomy at Tulane University. Bean’s final career destination was the University of Virginia. Bean succeeded Harvey E. Jordan as chair of the anatomy department at the university.[2]
Work and Research
While an instructor at the University of Michigan in 1906, Bean wrote, “Some Racial Peculiarities of the Negro Brain” where he concluded that black people had a different brain structure from white people which explained the inferior cognitive ability of black people. Bean used the same logic to explain the superior intelligence of males over females. These genetic and structural differences, according to Bean, meant that they could not be helped or overcome through education and training.[2]
At the University of Virginia, Bean befriended Harvey E. Jordan, William Henry Heck, and Ivey Foreman Lewis. All three men were fellow scientists that worked in other departments at UVA with a special interest in eugenics. Along with Lewis, Bean founded Sigma Xi, Virginia’s chapter of the scientific honor society, in 1923. Through the organization and his classes, Bean worked to spread enthusiasm for eugenics to other professors, scientists and students at UVA.[2]
Bean eventually shifted to researching the topic of “Old Virginians” that had been in Virginia since the original settlers of the colony. Bean was descended from this group and had seen them as racially perfect. George Oscar Ferguson and Lawrence Thomas Royster were new members of the UVA faculty that helped Bean in his later research.[2]