Mary Beatrice Midgley was born on 13 September 1919 in London. An interviewer from The Guardian described her as ‘the most frightening philosopher in the country: the one before whom it is least pleasant to appear a fool’. After studying at Oxford, she went into the civil service during the Second World War and taught at local schools. Returning to Oxford in 1947, she found her research ‘so unfashionable’ that she never completed her thesis. After teaching philosophy at the University of Reading, she moved to the University of Newcastle in 1962 as Professor of Philosophy.
Awarded honorary degrees from Durham and Newcastle, she was Honorary Fellow of the Policy, Ethics and Life Science Research Centre at Newcastle. In 2011, she was the first winner of the Philosophy Now Award for Contributions in the Fight Against Stupidity. Important works include Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1978), Animals and Why They Matter (1983), Wickedness (1984), Evolution as a Religion (1985), Science and Poetry (2000), The Myths We Live By (2003), and What is Philosophy For? (2018).