Elaine Morgan OBE (born 1920), born Elaine Floyd, is a Welsh feminist writer, best known for her television work, including screenwriting most of the episodes of Dr. Finlay's Casebook. She is also the author of several books about the aquatic ape hypothesis, among them The Descent of Woman, The Aquatic Ape, The Scars of Evolution, The Descent of the Child, The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis and her latest The Naked Darwinist which discussed the reasons why there is so little discussion of aquatic scenarios in the academic literature. She also authored Falling Apart and Pinker's List.

Personal life

Morgan was born and brought up in Hopkinstown, near Pontypridd. She has lived for many years in Mountain Ash, near Aberdare. She graduated from Lady Margaret Hall Oxford University with a degree in English. She married Morien Morgan (d.1997) and she has three sons.

Writing

Morgan has written for many television series since 1955. The 32 credits for her work on IMDB include:

• Campion two episodes (1989)
• The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (1981)
• Testament of Youth (adaption of the book) (1979)
• How Green Was My Valley (adaption of the book) (1975)
• Nine episodes of Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1963-1970)

She has won two BAFTAs and two Writers' Guild awards. She also wrote the script for the Horizon documentary about Joey Deacon, the disabled fund-raiser. This won the Prix Italia in 1975. She was honoured with the Writer of the Year Award from the Royal Television Society for her series of Testament of Youth ^[1].

In 2003 she started to write a weekly column for the Welsh national daily newspaper, The Western Mail.

She was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by Glamorgan University in December 2006^[2] and an honorary fellow of the University of Cardiff in 2007^[3].

Morgan was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours for services to literature and to education.^[4]

Advocacy for the aquatic ape hypothesis

Morgan first became drawn into scientific writing when reading popularizers of human evolution such as Desmond Morris. She described her reaction as one of irritation because the explanations were largely male-centered. Morris's book The Naked Ape mentioned the idea that humans may have undergone a phase of adaptation to living in water, and in 1972 wrote her first book on the subject of the aquatic ape hypothesis, The Descent of Woman. Morgan went on to write five more books on the topic, but the idea was never accepted within paleontology as a viable hypothesis. The story of Morgan's work on the aquatic ape hypothesis was chronicled in the 1998 BBC documentary "The Aquatic Ape" and in 2009 presented a TED lecture on the topic.^[5]

Other work

Her most recent book, Pinker's List, is a response to Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, in which she rejects his claim to objectivity and argues that the "blank-slate" beliefs he caricatures have long been extinct.

Bibliography

Aquatic ape hypothesis

• The Aquatic Ape, 1982, Stein & Day Pub, ISBN 0-285-62509-8
• The Scars of Evolution, 1990, Souvenir Press, ISBN 0-285-62996-4
• The Descent of the Child, 1995, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-509895-1
• The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, 1997, Souvenir Press, ISBN 0-285-63377-5
• The Naked Darwinist, 2008, Eildon Press, ISBN 0-9525620-30

Other

• Falling Apart: The Rise and Decline of Urban Civilisation, 1976, Souvenir Press Ltd. ISBN 0-285-62234-X
• Pinker's List, 2005, Eildon Press, ISBN 0-9525620-2-2

References

External links

• Homepage
• Please use a more specific IMDb template. See the documentation for available templates.
• "Scars of Evolution", a BBC Radio 4 programme featuring Morgan
• BBC Biography