David Starr Jordan

Jordan was born in Gainesville, New York, and grew up on a farm in upstate New York. His parents made the unorthodox decision to educate him at a local girls' high school.[4] His middle name of Starr does not appear in early census records, and was apparently self-selected; he began using it by the time he was enrolled at Cornell. He said it was in honor of his mother’s devotion to the minister Thomas Starr King.

He was inspired by Louis Agassiz to pursue his studies in ichthyology. He was part of the pioneer class of undergraduates at Cornell University, graduating in 1872 with a master's degree in botany.

He wrote his autobiography The Days of a Man, "During the three years which followed [my entrance as a "belated" freshman in March 1869], I completed all the requirements for a degree of Bachelor of Science, besides about two year of advanced work in Botany. Taking this last into consideration, the faculty conferred on me at graduation in June 1872, the advanced degree of Master of Science instead of the conventional Bachelor's Degree...it was afterward voted not to grant any second degree within a year after the Bachelor had been received. I was placed, quite innocently, in the position of being the only graduate of Cornell to merge two degrees into one."

His master's thesis was on the topic "The Wild Flowers of Wyoming County".

Portrait of Susan Bowen Jordan in 1879

Jordan obtained a medical degree, M.D., from Indiana Medical College in 1875.[5] He wrote in his autobiography that while teaching at Indianapolis High School, "I was also able to spend some time in the Medical College, from which, in the spring of 1875, I received the (scarcely earned) degree of Doctor of Medicine, thought it had not at all been my intention to enter that profession." Jordan taught comparative anatomy at the college the following year (1876); the Indiana Medical College in Indianapolis opened in 1869 and closed its doors in 1878.[6]

Jordan married Susan Bowen (1845-1885) in Peru, Massachusetts on March 10, 1875 and she died in 1885 after 10 years of marriage. They had three children, Edith Monica (1877–1965), Harold Bowen (1882–1959), and Thora (1884–1886).[7] Jordan later married Jessie Knight (1866–1952) in 1887. Jordan and his second wife had three additional children, Knight Starr (1888–1947), Barbara (1891–1900), and Eric Knight (1903–1926).[5][4][8]

Jordan initially taught natural history courses at several small Midwestern colleges.

He was then accepted into the natural history faculty of Indiana University Bloomington as a professor of zoology in 1879. Jordan's teaching included his version of eugenics, which "sought to prevent the decay of the Anglo-Saxon/Nordic race by limiting racial mixing and by preventing the reproduction of those he deemed unfit".[9] Six years later, in 1885, he was named President of Indiana University, becoming the nation's youngest university president at age 34 and the first Indiana University president that was not an ordained minister.[10] He improved the university's finances and public image, doubled its enrollment, and instituted an elective system which, like Cornell's, was an early application of the modern liberal arts curriculum.[4]

In March 1891, he was approached by Leland and Jane Stanford, who offered him the presidency of their about-to-open California university, Leland Stanford Junior University. Andrew White, the president of Cornell, had recommended Jordan to the Stanfords based on an educational philosophy fit with the Stanfords' vision of a non-sectarian, co-educational school with a liberal arts curriculum. He quickly accepted the offer.[4] Jordan arrived at Stanford in June 1891 and immediately set about recruiting faculty for the university's planned September opening. Pressed for time, he drew heavily on his own acquaintances; most of the fifteen founding professors came either from Cornell or Indiana University. That first year at Stanford he was instrumental in establishing the university's Hopkins Marine Station. He served Stanford as president until 1913 and then chancellor until his retirement in 1916. The university decided not to renew his three-year-term as chancellor in 1916. As the years went on, Jordan became increasingly alienated from the university.[10]

While chancellor, he was elected president of the National Education Association.[11] Jordan was a member in the Bohemian Club and the University Club in San Francisco.[12] Jordan served as a Director of the Sierra Club from 1892 to 1903.[13]

In retirement, Jordan remained active, writing on ichthyology, world relations, peace, and his autobiography. He served as an evolution expert witness for the defense in the 1925 Scopes Trial.[10]

Jordan also continued to promote his views on eugenics. In 1928 Jordan served on the initial board of trustees of the Human Betterment Foundation, a eugenics organization that advocated compulsory sterilization legislation in the United States.[14]

On September 19, 1931, Jordan died at his home on the Stanford campus after suffering a series of strokes over two years.[15]

In 1905, Jordan launched an apparent coverup of the murder by poisoning of Jane Stanford. While vacationing in Oahu, Stanford had suddenly died of strychnine poisoning, according to the local coroner’s jury. Jordan then sailed to Hawaii, hired a physician to investigate the case, and declared she had in fact died of heart failure, a condition whose symptoms bear no relationship to those actually observed.[16][17] His motive for doing this has been a subject of speculation. One possibility is that he was simply acting to protect the reputation of the university;[16][18] its finances were precarious and a scandal might have damaged fundraising. He had written the president of Stanford's board of trustees offering several alternate explanations for Mrs. Stanford's death, suggesting they select whichever would be most suitable.[16] Given that Mrs. Stanford had a difficult relationship with him and reportedly planned to remove him from his position at the university, he might have also had a personal motive to eliminate suspicions that might have swirled around an unsolved crime.[19] Jordan's version of Mrs. Stanford's demise[20] was largely accepted until the appearance of several publications in 2003 emphasizing the evidence that she was murdered.[16][18][19][21]

Jordan promoted the concept of improving human genetics, through removal from the breeding pool of those deemed unworthy to reproduce,[22] in his series of publications titled The Blood of the Nation. He then chaired the first Committee on Eugenics of the American Breeder's Association, from which the California program of forced deportation and sterilization emerged.[23] Jordan then went on to help found the Human Betterment Foundation as a trustee. The Human Betterment Foundation published "Sterilization for Human Betterment."

Jordan made a eugenics-based argument against warfare, contending that war was detrimental to the human species because it removed the strongest men from the gene pool.[24][25][26] In 1910, Jordan asserted "Future war is impossible because the nations cannot afford it" and the war debt in Europe amounts to 26 billion US dollars, "all owed to the unseen vampire, and which the nations will never pay and which taxes poor people 95 million dollars a year." He thought burdens of militarism in time of peace are exhausting the strength of the leading nations, already overloaded with debts and the certain result of a great war would be overwhelming bankruptcy.[27] Jordan was president of the World Peace Foundation from 1910 to 1914 and president of the World Peace Conference in 1915, and opposed U.S. involvement in World War I.[10]

Although a proponent of eugenics, Jordan was skeptical of many other pseudoscientific claims. He coined the term "sciosophy" to describe the "systematized ignorance" of the pseudoscientist.[28][29]

His later work, The Higher Foolishness, inspired the philosopher Martin Gardner to write his treatise on scientific skepticism, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.[28] However, Gardner noted that "the book is infuriating because although Jordan mentions the titles of dozens of crank works, from which he quotes extensively, he seldom tells you the names of the authors."[28]

Jordan's papers are housed at Stanford University[30] and at Swarthmore College[10]

In 1966 the fisheries research ship David Starr Jordan, was commissioned for service with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. The ship later served in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fleet as NOAAS David Starr Jordan (R 444). In 2010, the David Starr Jordan was sold for scrap.[31]

His son, Eric Knight Jordan (1903–1926), died at the age of 22 in a traffic accident near Gilroy, California.[32][33] Eric had participated in a paleontological expedition to the Revillagigedo Islands and was considering an academic career.[34]

Starting in 1986, the David Starr Jordan Prize was funded as a joint endowment by Cornell, Indiana University, and Stanford. It was awarded to a young scientist (under 40 years of age) that was making contributions in one of Jordan’s interests: evolution, ecology, population and organismal biology.[35]

From 1937 until 2018, Jordan had a middle school in Palo Alto named after him. After Jordan's involvement with the eugenics movement came to the notice of parents and the school board of the Palo Alto Unified School District, the board unanimously decided in 2018 to rename the school in honor of Frank Greene, Jr.[36][37][38] The school district in Burbank, California also renamed a school in 2019.[39]

• 1877 Honorary Ph.D. awarded by Butler University[40]
• 1886 Honorary LL.D. awarded by Cornell University[41]
• 1902 Honorary LL.D. awarded by Johns Hopkins University[42]
• 1909 Honorary LL.D. awarded by Indiana University[43]

• (1893). "The Educational Ideas of Leland Stanford," Educational Review 6, pp. 136–143.
• (1902). "Certain Problems of Democracy in Hawaii," Out West 16, pp. 25, 239.
• (1906). "The Trout and Salmon of the Pacific Coast," The Pacific Monthly 15, pp. 379–389.
• (1906). "Pelagic Sealing and the Fur Seal Herd," The Pacific Monthly 15, No. 6, pp. 517–522 [with George A. Clark].
• (1906). "Stanford University and the Earthquake of April 18, 1906," The Pacific Monthly 15, No. 6, pp. 635–646.
• (1907). "The Present Status of Darwinism," The Dial, Vol XLIII, July/December, pp. 161–163.
• (1913). "The Interlocking Directorates of War," The World's Work 26, pp. 277–279.

• (1893). "Temperature and Vertebræ: A Study in Evolution," in The Wilder Quarter-Century Book. Ithaca, N.Y.: Comstock Publishing, Co.
• (1912). Foreword to Woman in the United States, by Baron d'Estournelles de Constant. San Francisco, Cal.: A.M. Robertson.
• (1912). "Relations of Japan and the United States," in Japan and Japanese-American Relations. New York: G.E. Stechert and Company.