The English demographer, sociologist, and academic administrator Sir Alexander Morris Carr-Saunders (1886-1966) pioneered in analyzing population problems and social structures. He contributed significantly to the development of higher education in Britain's colonies.

Youngest child of a wealthy underwriter in Milton Heath, Dorking, Alexander Carr-Saunders was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where in 1908 he took first-class honors in zoology. As Naples Biological Scholar, he was a laboratory instructor at Oxford for a year, but he became increasingly uncertain about his profession. Independently wealthy, he pursued mountaineering and a love of art and studied biometrics at the University of London.

In London before World War I Carr-Saunders was secretary of the Research Committee of the Eugenics Education Society; subwarden at Toynbee Hall, the university settlement house; an elected member of the Stepney Borough Council; and a member of the bar. During the war he was commissioned in the Royal Army...