Morgan, J(ohn) P(ierpont), Jr. (b. Sept. 7, 1867, Irvington, N.Y., U.S.—d. March 13, 1943, Boca Grande, Fla.) U.S. banker and financier. He joined J.P. Morgan and Co. in 1892 and took control of it in 1913 on the death of his father, J.R Morgan. In World War I he served as pur¬ chasing agent in the U.S. for the British and French governments and organized the underwriting of more than $1.5 billion in Allied bonds. He pooled funds with other bankers in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the crash of 1929. The Banking Act of 1933 compelled his firm to separate its investment-banking and commercial-banking activities. Morgan, Stan¬ ley and Co. became a new investment-banking firm, while Morgan him¬ self remained head of J.P. Morgan & Co., which was from then on strictly a commercial-banking firm.
Morgan, Joe in full Joseph Leonard Morgan (b. Sept. 19, 1943, Bonham, Texas, U.S.) U.S. baseball player. Morgan was named Rookie of the Year in 1965, his first full season with the Houston Astros. During each of his eight seasons with the Cincinnati Reds (1972-79) he made the All-Star team as second baseman. He was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 1975 and 1976, when he led the Reds to con¬ secutive World Series championships. He broke Rogers Hornsby’s record for home runs by a second baseman, with 266 (later broken by Ryne Sandberg with 277). In 1990 Morgan was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Morgan, John (b. June 10, 1735, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—d. Oct. 15, 1789, Philadelphia) U.S. medical educator. He studied medicine in Europe before returning to the American colonies to found their first medical school in 1765 at the University of Pennsylvania. As North America’s first professor of medicine, he required a liberal education of his students and separated medicine, surgery, and pharmacology into distinct disci¬ plines, policies widely opposed by colonial physicians. He was made head of the army’s medical system in 1775; however, the Continental Congress did not let him organize the system and dismissed him in 1777, holding him responsible for the war’s high death rate. Though absolved in 1779, he never recovered, and he died an impoverished recluse.
Morgan, Julia (b. Jan. 20, 1872, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.—d. Feb. 2, 1957, San Francisco) U.S. architect. She received an engineering degree from the University of California at Berkeley. The first female architec¬ ture student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1898), she later became California’s first licensed woman architect. Morgan then commenced 40 years of architectural work that resulted in some 800 buildings, most of them in California, particularly in San Francisco. She opened her own architectural office in 1904, and the devastation of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 provided her with the opportunity to design hundreds of homes and many churches, office buildings, and educational buildings in the Bay area. She is best remembered for designing William Randolph Hearst’s private castle at San Simeon (1919-38).
Morgan, Lewis Henry (b. Nov. 21, 1818, near Aurora, N.Y., U.S.—d. Dec. 17, 1881, Rochester, N.Y.) U.S. ethnologist and a princi¬ pal founder of scientific anthropology. Morgan developed a deep interest
in the American Indians and in 1846 was eventually adopted by the Sen¬ eca. His Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871) was a world survey of kinship systems that sought to establish con¬ nections between cultures and particularly to establish the Asiatic origin of the American Indians. This work led to a comprehensive theory of sociocultural evolution, set forth in Ancient Society (1877). He claimed that advances in social organization arose primarily from changes in food production and that society had progressed from a hunting-and-gathering stage (“savagery”) to one of settled agriculture (“barbarism”) to modem “civilization.” This theory, with the related theory that society originated in a state of sexual promiscuity and advanced through various forms of family life before culminating in monogamy, is now obsolete. For many years, however, Morgan was the dean of American anthropology, and his pioneering ideas influenced the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, among others.
Morgan, Thomas Hunt (b. Sept. 25, 1866, Lexington, Ky., U.S.—d. Dec. 4, 1945, Pasadena, Calif.) U.S. zoologist and geneticist. He received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. As a professor at Colum¬ bia University (1904-28) and California Institute of Technology (1928— 45), he conducted important research on heredity. Like many of his contemporaries, Morgan found Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selec¬ tion implausible because it could not be tested experimentally, and he objected to Mendelian and chromosome theories, arguing that no single chromosome could carry specific hereditary traits. His opinion changed as a result of his studies of Drosophila. He developed the hypothesis of sex-linked traits. He adopted the term gene and concluded that genes were possibly arranged in a linear fashion on chromosomes. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933. See also Calvin Blackman Bridges.
Morgan le Fay (“Morgan the Fairy”) Enchantress in Arthurian legend. Skilled in the arts of healing and changing shape, she ruled Avalon, the island where King Arthur retreated to be healed of his wounds after his last battle. She had learned her magic powers from books and from Mer¬ lin. In other stories she is Arthur’s sister and enemy, and seduces him to produce a son who later kills Arthur.
Morgenthau Vmor-gon-.thoV, Henry, Jr. (b. May 11, 1891, New York, N.Y., U.S.—d. Feb. 6, 1967, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.) U.S. public offi¬ cial. He was editor of American Agriculturist (1922-33) and a close friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt. As secretary of the treasury in Roosevelt’s cabi¬ net (1934-45), he was responsible for financing the programs of the New Deal and the enormous military expenditures of World War II. Over $370 billion was spent during the period, three times more money than was spent by the 50 previous secretaries of the treasury. He resigned after Roosevelt’s death and retired to his farm.
Morghab \mur-'gab\ River or Murgab River \mur-'gab\ River, northwestern Afghanistan and southeastern Turkmenistan. It flows gener¬ ally west and then north into Turkmenistan and is about 600 mi (970 km) long. It forms the border between Turkmenistan and Afghanistan for sev¬ eral miles. North of Mary (Merv), it disappears into the sands of the Kar- akum Desert.
Morike Vmoe-re-koN, Eduard Friedrich (b. Sept. 8, 1804, Ludwigs- burg, Wurttemberg—d. June 4, 1875, Stuttgart) German lyric poet. A clergyman, Morike suffered all his life from psychosomatic illnesses and retired at age 39, supplementing his pension by lecturing on literature. His small literary output includes the novel Maler Nolten (1832), fairy tales, and Mozart on the Way to Prague (1856), a humorous examination of the problems of artists in a world uncongenial to art. His best works are his exquisite lyrics, notably the “Peregrina” poems, which immortal¬ ize a youthful love, and sonnets to a onetime betrothed; many were set to music by Hugo Wolf.