Strawson, P.F. 1919–2006

(Peter Frederick Strawson)

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born November 23, 1919, in London, England; died February 13, 2006. Philosopher, educator, and author. An Oxford professor, Strawson was a leading philosophical thinker who was influential for his arguments concerning language, truth, and logic. Graduating with a master's degree from Oxford University in 1940, he served in the British Army's Royal Artillery and Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during World War II, achieving the rank of captain. Afterwards, he taught briefly at University College of North Wales before joining the Oxford faculty as a lecturer in philosophy in 1947. The next year, he was made a fellow and tutor, and from 1968 until his 1987 retirement he was professor of metaphysics. He continued to teach as a visiting professor at universities around the world until 1991. Strawson began making an impact in the field when in 1950 he published two papers that are still much discussed among his colleagues today. The first regarded the relationship between a statement of truth and the facts that exist outside these statements; the second concerned a similar problem regarding what philosophers call the Theory of Descriptions. Among Strawson's respected publications are The Bounds of Sense (1966), Subject and Predicate in Logic and Grammar (1974), and Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy (1992). Created a knight bachelor in 1977, he was also a fellow of the British Academy.

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PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), February 15, 2006, p. 58.