Saul Aaron Kripke
- Born:
- November 13, 1940, Bay Shore, New York, USA
- Died:
- September 15, 2022, Plainsboro, New Jersey, USA
- Nationality:
- American
- Profession(s):
- Philosopher, Logician
Early Life and Education
- Child prodigy; self-taught ancient Hebrew by age six and mastered calculus before finishing grade school.
- Graduated from Omaha Central High School in 1958.
- Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in mathematics from Harvard University in 1962.
- Received a Fulbright Fellowship.
Career and Major Achievements
- Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, 1963-1966.
- Professor at Rockefeller University, 1968-1977.
- Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, 1977-1998.
- Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, 1998-2022.
- Made significant contributions to modal logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and set theory.
- Developed Kripke semantics for modal logic.
Notable Works
- "A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic" (1959)
- "Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic" (1963)
- Naming and Necessity (1980) - A highly influential work in philosophy of language and metaphysics.
- Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982)
- Reference and Existence: The John Locke Lectures (2013)
Legacy and Impact
Saul Aaron Kripke, a towering figure in 20th and 21st-century philosophy, profoundly influenced the fields of logic, language, and metaphysics. His work on modal logic, naming, necessity, and the interpretation of Wittgenstein continues to shape philosophical discourse.