(1926 – 2016) was a renowned mathematician and philosopher, and a dominant figure in the life of the English-speaking world for more than half a century. Before his death he held the position of John Cogan University Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Harvard University, and before that was a professor at Northwestern, Princeton, and MIT. Dr Putnam’s contributions to mathematics and analytic philosophy are many, and his myriad publications include Representation and Reality, The Many Faces of Realism, Renewing Philosophy, and Ethics Without Ontology. During his career he served as President of the American Philosophical Association, was Fellow of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts, and won the Prometheus Prize and the Rolf Schock Prize in Philosophy, among many other distinctions. Dr Putnam was a towering figure in questions ranging from language and epistemology to pragmatism and probability, and exhibited above all a genuine willingness to question his own assumptions in search of the truth.
The College was honored to have Dr Putnam as a Founding Patron.
