Les Morgan

LES MORGAN IS THE AUTHOR of several books on Sanskrit studies, including Croaking Frogs: A Guide to Sanskrit Metrics and Figures of Speech, and The Art of Sanskrit Translation: Principles and Practices. His study guides include The Sāṁkhyakārikā of Īśvarakṛṣṇa: A Sanskrit Study Guide; Translating the Bhagavadgītā: A Workbook for Sanskrit Students; and Study Guide to the Bhagavadgītā: With Practical Concordance, the companion volume to Ram Karan Sharma’s Bhagavadgītā, which he edited.

As a technologist, he has a special focus on corpus linguistics. From 2005 to 2018, he collaborated with R. K. Sharma to develop methods for recognition and concordancing of poetic similes and metaphors in the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa. He co-presented on that project with R. K. Sharma at the University of California and the 15th World Sanskrit Conference in New Delhi (2012).

He is co-developer of the Vidyut Input Method Editor (IME) for entry of Devanāgarī on Windows computers. He also developed the first bilingual software module for crew members on NASA’s International Space Station, with interfaces in English and Russian.

He retired as a Senior Consultant to the Center for Elder Care and Advanced Illness, where he specialized in health care policy and information technology, including development of standards for electronic medical records to enable interoperable service plans. His work on end-of-life issues dates back to the early years of the hospice movement in the United States. He is one of the founding members of The San Francisco Bay Area Network for End-of-Life Care (SFEOL), a diverse group representing local hospices, healthcare organizations, and non-profit organizations serving end-of-life needs in the region.

Publications as an editor and book designer include Nancy Jaicks Alexander’s Just Enough (2010); Lori A. Hedderman’s Preparing Your Children For Goodbye: A Guidebook For Dying Parents (2011) and Remembering Together: A Guidebook for Meaningful Conversations With Your Aging Parents (2016); and Joanne Lynn’s MediCaring Communities (2016). Other projects include Carol Pitts’s Spiritual Freedom in the Brahma Sūtras (2012) and Peter Frentzel’s Tao Te Ching: The Inner Journey (2013).