20 Facts About Elaine Morgan

Elaine Morgan OBE, FRSL, was a Welsh writer for television and the author of several books on evolutionary anthropology.

Elaine Morgan advocated the aquatic ape hypothesis, which advocated as a corrective to what she saw as theories that purveyed gendered stereotypes and failed to account for women's role in human evolution adequately.

Elaine Morgan lived for many years until her death, in Mountain Ash, near Aberdare.

Elaine Morgan graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, with a degree in English.

Elaine Morgan married Morien Morgan, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War who died in 1997, and they had three sons, the oldest being Dylan Morgan.

Elaine Morgan began writing in the 1950s after winning a competition in the New Statesman, successfully publishing, then joining the BBC when it began to produce her plays for television.

Elaine Morgan's works included popular dramas, newspaper columns, and a series of publications on evolutionary anthropology.

Elaine Morgan argued that such "Tarzanist" anthropological narratives purveyed gendered stereotypes of women that failed to adequately account for women's role in human evolution.

Elaine Morgan published Falling Apart: the Rise and Decline of Urban Civilization in 1976, and in 2005 Pinker's List, a critique of Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate.

Elaine Morgan wrote for many television series, including the adaptations of How Green Was My Valley, Off to Philadelphia in the Morning and Testament of Youth.

Elaine Morgan won two BAFTAs and two Writers' Guild awards.

Elaine Morgan wrote the script for the Horizon documentary about the disabled fund-raiser Joey Deacon, winning the Prix Italia in 1975.

Elaine Morgan was honoured with the Writer of the Year Award from the Royal Television Society for her serialisation of Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth.

In 2003 Elaine Morgan started a weekly column for the Welsh daily The Western Mail, which won her the 2011 Columnist of the Year award in the Society of Editors' Regional Press Awards.

Elaine Morgan was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2009 Birthday Honours for services to literature and education.

Elaine Morgan became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature the same year, and an honorary freeman of Rhondda Cynon Taf in April 2013.

Elaine Morgan has promoted a version of the aquatic ape hypothesis, which proposes that human evolution had an "aquatic phase" in the Miocene or Pliocene epoch.

Elaine Morgan's work has received warm comments from several prominent people.

In 2000 Elaine Morgan was awarded the Letten F Saugstad prize in Oslo for her "contribution to scientific knowledge" and in December 2008 she was admitted as a Fellow of the Linnean Society, following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.

In 2019, Elaine Morgan was one of five women on a shortlist for a Cardiff statue.