Harry Federley (22 March 1879 – 13 November 1951) was a Finnish zoologist and pioneer of genetics. He conducted hybridization experiments on moths and was later also involved in eugenics in Finland. He was the founder of the department of genetics at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

Life and work

Federley was born in Viipuri in a family of business people. His mother was of German origin while his father was Swedish. He went to study at the

where he examined the development of lepidopteran embryos. For his doctoral research in 1906 he examined the effect of temperature and moisture in the pupal period and its effect on the pigmentation of lepidopteran wings. He also made experiments on breeding of the '' Pygaera'' moths under

Enzio Reuter Enzio Rafael Reuter (30 March 1867, in Turku – 11 February 1951, in Helsinki) was a Finland, Finnish entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera. He wrote ''Über die Palpen der Rhopalocera: Ein Beitrag zur Erkenntnis der verwandtschaftlichen Be ...

. In 1910 Federley went to

Jena Jena (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 in ...

to study embryology (Entwicklungsgeschichte) and examine

Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; ; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new s ...

's biogenetic law but shifted interests to genetics. He examined Johannsen's ''Elementen der exakten Erblichkeitslehre'' and Bateson's works working with

Ludwig Plate Ludwig Hermann Plate (16 August 1862 – 16 November 1937) was a German zoologist and student of Ernst Haeckel. He wrote a "thorough and extensive defence" of Darwinism, but before Mendel's work had been assimilated in the modern synthesis. Bo ...

on mice in addition to his moths. In 1913 he wrote on chromosome ratios in '' Pygaera'' with cross-breeding between ''P. anachoreta'', ''P. curtula'' and ''P. pigra'' which produced infertile offspring. He showed that they had two sets of chromosomes (a pair each from each parent) rather than one set. From 1909 he gave lectures on heredity at the University of Helsinki and in 1915 he was made docent of genetics rather than of zoology and thus became the first teacher of genetics in Finland. In 1923 he became extraordinary personal professor and he then established a department of genetics. He retired in 1949. Federley became aware of eugenics and the German circles which included Ludwig Plate who contributed to the journal ''Archiv für Rassen- und'' Gesellschaftsbiologie''. ''Federley wrote reviews for the same journal while he worked in Jena. In 1911, Federley attended the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden where a section was devoted to eugenics. Federley became a proponent of eugenics in Finland and worked in association with the Public Health Association of Swedish-speaking Finland (founded in 1921, ''Samfundet Folkhälsan i Svenska Finland'') with suggestions on sterilization of the "feeble-minded" although this was voluntary. Federley worked with the Florin Commission along with

Ossian Schauman Julius Ossian Schauman (30 March 1862 – 6 February 1922) was one of the founders of the Swedish-speaking non-governmental organization ''Folkhälsan'', which provides social welfare and health care services in Finland. He was also the younger b ...

and Jarl Hagelstam''. ''He was involved in promoting positive eugenics, the rewarding of Swedish-speaking mothers in Finland. His lectures included a course in “Human heredity and eugenics” which he offered until 1946. The teaching included readings from the German textbook by Baur, Fischer and Lenz, ''Grundrißder menschlichen Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Federley, Harry 1879 births 1952 deaths Finnish geneticists