In 1898, Charles Davenport came to Cold Spring Harbor as director of the Biological Laboratory. He was one of the first American biologists to take up Mendel's work and published several papers on human genetics in the early years of the 20th century. In 1911, Davenport published Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, describing what was then known about the inheritance of human physical and behavioral traits. However, as the leading scientific force of the American eugenics movement, Davenport devoted most of the book to how the new science of heredity would lead to a deeper understanding of human nature and the causes of social problems.