Stanley Porteus

Stanley David Porteus (April 24, 1883 – October 21, 1972) was an Australian psychologist and author.

Early life Porteus was born at Box Hill, Victoria, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. His father was a Methodist minister, and the family moved frequently.

In 1916, Porteus began research on brain size and intelligence at the University of Melbourne, where he also lectured on experimental education. His theories about the superior intelligence of white races has led to recent controversy, including protests by students at the University of Hawaiʻi. Porteus was an early contributor to Mankind Quarterly, helped William Shockley organize the Foundation for Education on Eugenics and Dysgenics, and served on the executive committee of the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics.

He died in 1972 at Honolulu. His ashes are scattered at sea. Less than two months later, however, a group of university students and faculty called the Coalition to Rename Porteus Hall mounted a full-scale campaign in opposition to the name. Both the original decision to name the building after him and the opposition to the name centered on his 1926 book Temperament and Race which the university called, "a classic in its field" but which the Coalition denounced as "a flagrantly racist attack on all non-white peoples" and "particularly insulting to the indigenous and non-white immigrant groups who, then as now, make up the overwhelming majority of the population of Hawaiʻi."

Selected publications Temperament and Race (1926) Calabashes and Kings (1945) The Restless Voyage (1948) Providence Ponds: A Novel of Early Australia (1951)