Who was a prominent advocate for the use of cranial capacity as a basis for racial classification?

The choice of Samuel George Morton as the prominent advocate for the use of cranial capacity as a basis for racial classification is well-founded. Morton was a 19th-century American physician and naturalist best known for his studies on human skulls, where he measured cranial capacity to draw conclusions about intellectual capacity and racial hierarchy. He famously argued that cranial size correlated with intelligence, positing that different races could be stratified based on the size of their skulls. This had significant implications for his racial classifications, reinforcing the pseudoscientific views of racial superiority prevalent at the time.

Morton's work is often critiqued for its methodological flaws and biases, as he selectively reported findings that fit his hypotheses while ignoring evidence to the contrary. His theories were influential in shaping racist ideologies that persisted into the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This context reinforces the significance of Morton’s ideas in the discussion of race and anthropology, marking him as a pivotal figure in the misuse of anthropological research to support discriminatory ideologies.