Saul Kripke

Born in Long Island, New York in 1940, Saul Kripke is an award winning logician and philosopher noted for the jointly developed Kripke Platek set theory, his causal theory of reference and his Kripkenstein theory. He was a child prodigy, too, having apparently learned Ancient Hebrew on his own by the time he was six before quickly grasping complex mathematics and philosophical questions. In 1980 Kripke published his hugely significant book Naming and Necessity, which discusses proper nouns within the context of the philosophy of language. Kripke has also had a significant bearing on areas surrounding mathematical logic, the philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics and epistemology. In 2001 he was awarded the esteemed Rolf Schock Prize. Furthermore, according to a 2009 poll, in which votes were cast by philosophers, Kripke ranked as the seventh most important philosopher of the past two centuries. He has taught at Harvard, New York s Rockefeller University, and Princeton where he is currently a professor emeritus. In addition, he is a distinguished professor of philosophy at the City University of New York.