The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#4601
William H. Poteat
#36924
Overall Influence
1919 - 2000 (81 years)
William H. Poteat was an American philosopher, scholar, and charismatic professor of philosophy, religion, and culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1947 to 1957 and at Duke University from 1960 to 1987. During that time he did foundational work in the critique of Modern and Postmodern intellectual culture. He was instrumental in introducing scientist-philosopher Michael Polanyi and his Post-Critical philosophy to the United States. He was a master of the Socratic Method of teaching and identified himself a "practicing dialectician," skilled through the use of irony...
Go to Profile#4602
Saeid Zibakalam
#61787
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Saeid Zibakalam is an Iranian academic and conservative political activist who self-identifies as a justice-seeker." Education and career He gained a PhD in philosophy from University of Leeds in 1990, where he remained a visiting scholar for the next two years, before his return to Iran. He then worked as a research fellow at Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies. Zibakalm is currently a faculty member at University of Tehran.
Go to Profile#4603
Adolph Stöhr
1855 - 1921 (66 years)
Adolph Stöhr was professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna. His lectures and publications covered subjects such as logic, metaphysics, philosophy of language, experimental psychology, psychology of perception, and psychology of association.
Go to Profile#4604
John A. Spertus
#79988
Overall Influence
#4605
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
1888 - 1973 (85 years)
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy was a historian and social philosopher, whose work spanned the disciplines of history, theology, sociology, linguistics and beyond. Born in Berlin, Germany into a non-observant Jewish family, the son of a prosperous banker, he converted to Christianity in his late teens, and thereafter the interpretation and reinterpretation of Christianity was a consistent theme in his writings. He met and married Margrit Hüssy in 1914. In 1925, the couple legally combined their names. They had a son, Hans, in 1921.
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Parvis Emad
#27267
Overall Influence
1935 - 2023 (88 years)
Parvis Emad was an Iranian-American philosopher and translator of Martin Heidegger's writings. He was the founder and co-editor of the journal Heidegger Studies. Emad was a professor emeritus at DePaul University.
Go to Profile#4607
Morris W. Lev
#80024
Overall Influence
#4608
Menachem Lorberbaum
#45571
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Menachem Lorberbaum is an Israeli professor and the chair of the School of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Biography Menachem Lorberbaum completed his PhD in 1993 under the joint supervision of Aviezer Ravitzki of the Hebrew University and Michael Walzer of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton with a dissertation entitled: Politics and the Limits of Law in Jewish Medieval Thought. While writing his dissertation he was invited to be a fellow at the school of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he stayed for three years.
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Henry N. Wagner
#69168
Overall Influence
1927 - 2012 (85 years)
Henry N. Wagner , a former professor at Johns Hopkins University, is one of the pioneering researchers in nuclear medicine.
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Johannes Jacobus Poortman
1896 - 1970 (74 years)
Johannes Jacobus Poortman , studied philosophy and psychology at Groningen University under Professor Gerardus Heymans. In 1919 he received his Master of Arts; many years later he would also earn a Ph.D. He was also a theosophist.
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Anthony Steinbock
#71844
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Anthony J. Steinbock is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University in New York. He is the Director of the Phenomenology Research Center, editor-in-chief of Continental Philosophy Review and a co-editor-in-chief of Phenomenological Reviews. Steinbock is known for his research on phenomenology.
Go to Profile#4612
Rudolf Wagner
1805 - 1864 (59 years)
Rudolf Friedrich Johann Heinrich Wagner was a German anatomist and physiologist and the co-discoverer of the germinal vesicle. He made important investigations on ganglia, nerve-endings, and the sympathetic nervess.
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Samuel Bailey
1791 - 1870 (79 years)
Samuel Bailey was a British philosopher, economist and writer. He was called the "Bentham of Hallamshire". Life Bailey was born at Sheffield on 5 July 1791, the son of Joseph Bailey and Mary Eadon. His father was among the first of those Sheffield merchants who went to the United States to establish trade connections. After a few years in his father's business, he retired from all business concerns with an ample fortune, although he remained connected with the Sheffield Banking Company, of which he was a founder in 1831 and served as chairman for many years. Although an ardent liberal, he took little part in political affairs.
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Grigory Vyrubov
1843 - 1913 (70 years)
Grigory Nikolayevich Vyrubov, or Grégoire Wyrouboff was a Russian Empire Positivist philosopher and historian of science. History Born in Moscow, Vyrubov was brought up in Italy and France before studying medicine and natural philosophy at the University of Moscow. Heavily influenced by Edmond Nikolayevich Pommier, Vyrubov founded the Positivist journal Philosophie positive with Emile Littré in 1867: he edited the journal until 1881. He befriended Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen, and edited anonymously the first edition of Herzen's works .
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Edwin Etieyibo
#65277
Overall Influence
Edwin Ekwevukugbe Etieyibo is a Nigerian-Canadian philosopher dedicated to advancing African philosophy. He is an advocate of the validity of ethnophilosophy. This view has been criticised by a number of scholars and philosophers who argue that traditional African philosophy and ethnophilosophy are not genuine philosophy. Etieyibo is a professor of philosophy and chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta.
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René Leriche
1879 - 1955 (76 years)
Henri Marie René Leriche was a French vascular surgeon and physiologist. He was a specialist in pain, vascular surgery and the sympathetic trunk. He sensitized many who were mutilated in the first World war, he was the first to be interested in pain and to practice gentle surgery with as little trauma as possible.
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John N. Deck
1921 - 1979 (58 years)
John Norbert Deck was a Canadian philosopher. Adhering to neither sartorial nor intellectual fashions, Deck inspired generations of students with his highly idiosyncratic form of idealism, deriving from Plotinus but equally rooted in Thomas Aquinas and Hegel.
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A. Lee Dellon
#67623
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Arnold Lee Dellon is an American plastic surgeon known for pioneering and developing the modern field of peripheral nerve injury. He is a Professor of Plastic Surgery and Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University and the founder of Dellon Institutes for Peripheral Nerve Surgery.
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Robert Campin
1375 - 1444 (69 years)
Robert Campin , now usually identified with the Master of Flémalle , was a master painter who, along with Jan van Eyck, initiated the development of Early Netherlandish painting, a key development in the early Northern Renaissance.
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Herbert Schneider
1892 - 1984 (92 years)
Herbert Wallace Schneider was a German American professor of philosophy and a religious studies scholar long associated with Columbia University. Born in Berea, Ohio, Schneider completed his undergraduate and graduate education at Columbia, going on to teach at that school for many years. An early student of John Dewey, he studied pragmatism, ontology, social philosophy, and fascism, and is best remembered for his works The Puritan Mind and A History of American Philosophy . The Herbert Schneider Award, an annual presentation of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, is name...
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James Syme
1799 - 1870 (71 years)
James Syme was a Scottish pioneering surgeon. Early life James Syme was born on 7 November 1799 at 56 Princes Street in Edinburgh. His father was John Syme WS of Cartmore and Lochore, estates in Fife and Kinross. His father lost most of his fortune in attempting to develop the mineral resources of his property. His father had a legal practice at 23 North Hanover Street, not far from Princes Street in Edinburgh.
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Peter Safar
#4536
Overall Influence
1924 - 2003 (79 years)
Peter Safar was an Austrian anesthesiologist of Czech descent. He is credited with pioneering cardiopulmonary resuscitation . Early life Safar was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1924 into a medical family. His father, Karl, was an ophthalmologist and his mother, Vinca , who had a Jewish grandmother, was a pediatrician. He graduated from the University of Vienna in 1948. He married Eva Kyzivat and moved from Vienna to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1949 for surgical training at Yale University. He completed training in anesthesiology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1952. That same year he worked in Lima, Peru, and founded that country's first academic anesthesiology department.
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Jerzy Perzanowski
#76972
Overall Influence
1943 - 2009 (66 years)
Jerzy Perzanowski , was a Polish logician and ontologist, Professor of Logic to the University of Toruń from 1992 to 2004. Founder of the Polish review Logic and Logical Philosophy, his main contributions are to the development of modal logic, paraconsistent logic and ontology.
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Lucretia Mott
1793 - 1880 (87 years)
Lucretia Mott was an American Quaker, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongst the women excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840. In 1848, she was invited by Jane Hunt to a meeting that led to the first public gathering about women's rights, the Seneca Falls Convention, during which the Declaration of Sentiments was written.
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Carlos Cordon-Cardo
#35308
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Carlos Cordon-Cardo is a Spanish-born American physician and scientist known for his research in experimental pathology and molecular oncology. He holds the "Irene Heinz Given and John LaPorte Given" Chair in Pathology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
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Mark Bedau
#19315
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Mark A. Bedau is an American philosopher who works in the field of artificial life. He is the son of the philosopher Hugo Bedau . Bedau teaches philosophy at Reed College. He is also the co-founder of the European Center for Living Technology and Visiting Professor, Ph.D. Program in Life Sciences: Foundations and Ethics, European School of Molecular Medicine. Bedau is also the editor of the Artificial Life Journal.
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Sir Ralph Wedgwood, 4th Baronet
#71706
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Sir Ralph Nicholas Wedgwood, 4th Baronet is a British philosopher currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. Life and career Wedgwood was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, the only son of the architectural historian Alexandra and her husband Martin Wedgwood, later 3rd Baronet. He was named after his great-grandfather, Sir Ralph Wedgwood, 1st Baronet. Wedgwood is a descendant of the master potter Josiah Wedgwood. He inherited the Wedgwood Baronetcy of Etruria upon the death of his father on 12 October 2010. The heir presumptive to the Baronetcy is John J...
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Henry Shue
#33404
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Henry Greyson Shue is an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Politics and International Relations at Merton College of Oxford University. Previously he was Wyn and William Y Hutchinson Professor of Ethics & Public Life at Cornell University. Shue is best known for his book, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy.
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Ruben Gur
#80334
Overall Influence
#4630
Henri Laborit
#3478
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Henri Laborit was a French surgeon, neurobiologist, writer and philosopher. In 1952, Laborit was instrumental in the development of the drug chlorpromazine, published his findings, and convinced three psychiatrists to test it on a patient, resulting in great success. Laborit was recognized for his work, but as a surgeon searching for an anesthetic, he came to be at odds with psychiatrists who made their own discoveries and competing claims.
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Fang Keli
#61974
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Fang Keli was a Chinese New Confucian philosopher and a member of the Chinese Communist Party. He was best known for his work in New Confucianism and his theories which attempt to fusion Marxism and Chinese culture.
Go to Profile#4632
Karl-Georg Niebergall
#75059
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Karl-Georg Niebergall is a German logician and philosopher and professor for logic and philosophy of language at Humboldt University of Berlin. Biography From 1982 Niebergall studied mathematics in Darmstadt. After that he studied logic and philosophy of science under Godehard Link and Matthias Varga von Kibéd at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich . Niebergall received his PhD in philosophy from LMU in 1995. His PhD dissertation on ‘The metamathematics of non-axiomatized theories’ was awarded with the Stegmüller award of the German Society for Analytic Philosophy. In 1997 Niebergall was a visiting scholar at Stanford University.
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Susan Schneider
#44848
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Susan Lynn Schneider is an American philosopher and artificial intelligence expert. She is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University where she also holds the William F. Dietrich Distinguished Professorship. Schneider has also held the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation at NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress.
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Harry Stopes-Roe
#32932
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Harry Verdon Stopes-Roe was a British philosopher known mainly for his active role in the humanist movement in Britain and around the world. He was a Vice-President of the British Humanist Association until his death in May 2014, having served as its Chair previously.
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Laurence Zitvogel
#33380
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Laurence Zitvogel is a French physician specializing in oncology and immunology with a large research experience in exosomess and the biological impact of those structures in malignant neoplasms. Personal life Laurence Zitvogel was born in Suresnes, France on 25 December 1963. She has worked with her spouse, Guido Kroemer, since 2001.
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Walter George Muelder
#23293
Overall Influence
1907 - 2004 (97 years)
Walter George Muelder was an American social ethicist, public theologian, ecumenist, and Methodist minister. He studied under Edgar S. Brightman at Boston University and began his teaching career at Berea College and the University of Southern California. He served as Dean of Boston University School of Theology from 1945 to 1972, and was known as the "Red Dean" because of his socialist and pacifist leanings.
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Peter Byrne
#46764
Overall Influence
Peter Byrne is an emeritus professor in Philosophy at King's College London . Life Born in Wallasey, England, on 18 July 1950 and raised in Norris Green, Liverpool. He was educated at West Derby School, an all boys' Comprehensive. He studied Philosophy at the University of York, graduating with a first class degree in 1971, followed by a BPhil in Philosophy at Linacre College, Oxford. He was a lecturer, then later professor, of Philosophy and Ethics at Kings College from 1976 to 2009. In addition he was head of the department of Theology and Religious Studies at Kings from 2000 to 2002 and president of The British Society for the Philosophy of Religion from 2003 to 2005.
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David Alan Johnson
#66772
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David Alan Johnson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Yeshiva University and has previously taught at UCLA, Syracuse University, Ohio State University, University of Connecticut, Wesleyan University, and College of William & Mary.
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David W. Miller
#23888
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
David W. Miller is on the faculty of Princeton University, Director of the Princeton University Faith & Work Initiative, and scholar of the "faith at work" movement. Previously he taught for five years at the Yale School of Management and the Yale Divinity School and was the founding Executive Director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Prior to academia he was a senior executive in international business for 16 years.
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Qasem Soleimani
#594
Overall Influence
1957 - 2020 (63 years)
Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps . From 1998 until his assassination in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operationss. In his later years, he was considered by some analysts to be the right-hand man of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, as well as the second-most powerful person in Iran behind him.
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Christopher S. Hill
#52155
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Christopher S. Hill is an American philosopher and William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. He is known for his expertise on consciousness and philosophy of mind. Career Hill previously taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Michigan, the University of Arkansas, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has held various fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a fellow at the National Humanities Center. Hill is a former editor of Philosophical Topics and a former associate editor ...
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Fernando Andacht
#46256
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Fernando Torres Andacht is a Uruguayan-born semiotician. Andacht studied Letters at the University of the Republic, graduating in 1978. Afterwards he obtained an MA in General Linguistics at Ohio University , a Doctorate in Latin American Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway and a PhD in Communication and Information, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre . Currently he is a Member of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at the University of Ottawa.
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Elena Cornaro Piscopia
1646 - 1684 (38 years)
Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia or Elena Lucrezia Corner , also known in English as Helen Cornaro, was a Venetian philosopher of noble descent who in 1678 became one of the first women to receive an academic degree from a university, and the first to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree.
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Wilmon Henry Sheldon
1875 - 1980 (105 years)
Wilmon Henry Sheldon was a twentieth-century American philosopher. Life and career Sheldon was educated at Harvard University and taught at Yale. Major works
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Salahaddin Khalilov
#42306
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Salahaddin Khalilov is an Azerbaijani philosopher. Scientific-pedagogical activity He defended his PhD thesis titled “Systematic Structural Analysis of Scientific and Technological Progress in the USSR” in 1976. After completing his postdoctoral research he defended a thesis titled “Logico-gnoseological issues of Scientific and Technological Progress” in 1989. In the same year, he became a professor and the head of the Philosophy Department at Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University. He founded the University “Azerbaijan” , a private university in Azerbaijan, in 1991 and was its rector until 2006.
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Coriscus of Scepsis
#50601
Overall Influence
Coriscus of Scepsis and his brother Erastus were students of Plato. He was also a friend of Aristotle. Coriscus' son Neleus is mentioned as inheriting Aristotle's library. Scepsis is located about fifty kilometers from Assos in Asia Minor, to which Aristotle and Xenocrates traveled after Plato's death.
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David Bostock
#53890
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
David Bostock was a British philosopher and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Life and career Bostock was one of four children of Edward and Alice Bostock. He was educated at Amesbury School in Hindhead, Surrey, and at Charterhouse School, before undertaking his National Service as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Surrey Regiment. Having read Literae Humaniores at St John's College, Oxford, and after stipendiary posts at Leicester University , the Australian National University at Canberra and Harvard University , Bostock served as a Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at Merton College, Oxford between ...
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Bernard Delfgaauw
#29080
Overall Influence
1912 - 1993 (81 years)
Bernardus Maria Ignatius "Bernard" Delfgaauw was a Dutch philosopher. He studied Dutch language and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. In 1947 he earned his doctoral degree on the French metaphysician Louis Lavelle. In 1961 he became a professor in philosophy at the University of Groningen.
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Jussi Parikka
#42426
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Jussi Ville Tuomas Parikka is a Finnish new media theorist and Professor in Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is also Professor in Technological Culture & Aesthetics at Winchester School of Art as well as Visiting Professor at FAMU at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In Finland, he is Docent of digital culture theory at the University of Turku. Until May 2011 Parikka was the Director of the Cultures of the Digital Economy research institute at Anglia Ruskin University and the founding Co-Director of the Anglia Research Centre for Digital Culture. Wit...
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William Newton-Smith
#33061
Overall Influence
1943 - 2023 (80 years)
William Herbert Newton-Smith was a Canadian philosopher of science. Biography Newton-Smith's undergraduate degree from Queen's University was in Mathematics and Philosophy, in 1966. He took an MA from Cornell University in Philosophy, in 1968, and a DPhil in philosophy from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1974. His working life before retirement was mainly as a Fellow of Balliol.
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