Alexander Carr-Saunders

Sir Alexander Morris Carr-Saunders Kt KBE FBA (1886 - 1966) was an English sociologist.

Carr-Saunders was born in Reigate, Surrey and educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford where he gained a 1st in zoology in 1908. He remained a year at Oxford as a demonstrator but left in 1910 to University College London where he studied biometrics under Karl Pearson. Deciding against natural science, he instead read for the Bar.

He became the secretary of the Eugenics Education Society and lived at Toynbee Hall.

When the Great War broke in 1914, he attempted to obtain a commission in the London Scottish Regiment, but was instead commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps and was posted to a ration depot at Suez, due to the high standard of his French.

After the Armistice he returned to the Oxford Zoology department, taking an interest in the issues of population and overpopulation. The success of his magnum opus The Population Problem resulted in his appointment to the Charles Booth Chair of Social Science at the University of Liverpool in 1923. In 1937, he was appointed to succeed Sir William Beveridge as Director of the London School of Economics, and held that post until his retirement in 1955. He served on the Royal Commission on Population, 1944 - 1949.

Knighted in 1946, and created FBA in 1946 and KBE in 1957.