author
Ashley Montagu
1905–1999
A lively anthropologist and humanist, he spent decades challenging racist myths and explaining what science could — and could not — say about human difference. His books brought big questions about race, gender, birth, and human nature to a wide public audience.
1 Audiobook
The Dolphin in History
by Ashley Montagu, John Cunningham Lilly
About the author
Born in London in 1905 as Israel Ehrenberg, Ashley Montagu became a British-American anthropologist known for making serious science readable to general readers. He studied in London and Florence, earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1937, and went on to teach and lecture widely.
Montagu is especially remembered for arguing against biological ideas of race and for insisting that culture, history, and environment matter deeply in shaping human life. He helped popularize anthropology for non-specialists and was involved with UNESCO's 1950 statement on race, a landmark effort to challenge pseudoscientific racism.
Across a long career, he wrote extensively on subjects including human evolution, cooperation, childbirth, touch, and the social meaning of sex and gender. What makes his work still interesting is its mix of scholarship and moral urgency: he wanted science not just to explain people, but to help them live more humanely.