The Place of Quine in Analytic Philosophy
Abstract
Quine was born on June 25, 1908 in Akron Ohio. From 1926 to 1930 he attended
Oberlin College, from which he graduated with a B.A. in mathematics that included reading
in mathematical philosophy. He received his PhD from Harvard in 1932 with a dissertation
on Principia Mathematica advised by Whitehead. The next year traveling on fellowship in
Europe, where he interacted with Carnap, Tarski, Lesniewski, Lukasiewicz, Schlick, Hahn,
Reichenbach, Gödel, and Ayer. He was back in Cambridge between 1933 and 1936 as a
Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society. In 1936, he joined the Harvard faculty, where he
remained for 42 years, except for 3 years in the Navy in World War II. Returning after the
war, he was promoted to Professor in 1948. Although he retired in 1978, he retained his
office and remained active through much of the 1990s. Quine died on Christmas Day 2000.