QUINE, WILLARD VAN ORMAN

born June 25, 1908, Akron, Ohio, U.S. American logician and philosopher advocating systematic constructivist analysis of philosophy. Although his early career emphasized technical aspects of logic as a basis for philosophy, his later work investigated more general philosophical issues within a systematic linguistic framework. Initially trained in mathematics at Oberlin College and Harvard University before studying at Prague under Rudolf Carnap, he received an M.A. from Oxford and a Ph.D. from Harvard (1932) in philosophy. While at Harvard as lecturer and professor (193678), Quine was honoured as president of the American Philosophical Association (1951) and the Association for Symbolic Logic (195355) and received the Butler Gold Medal from Columbia University (1970). Among his publications are A System of Logistic (1934), Mathematical Logic (1940), Elementary Logic (1941), From a Logical Point of View (1953), Word and Object (1960), Set Theory and Its Logic (1963), Philosophy of Logic (1970), and The Roots of Reference (1973).