Thinkers Timeline

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe was a British philosopher. She was one of the most important philosophers writing in English in the 20th century. She was born on 18 March 1919 in Limerick, Ireland, where her father was stationed with the British Army. The family moved back to England soon after. She studied at Sydenham School in south London and then at St Hugh's College, Oxford, from 1937 to 1941. At Oxford she earned the highest degree in classics and philosophy. As a teenager, she read herself into Catholicism and converted, against her Anglican family's wishes. She remained a devout Catholic for the rest of her life. Her religion shaped her philosophy but did not limit it. She was also ferociously independent. As an Oxford undergraduate in 1939, she co-wrote a pamphlet arguing that Britain's entry into the Second World War was not justified. She kept this position even as most of her country and family disagreed. In 1942 she moved to Cambridge to study with Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. He became her teacher and friend. She was one of very few students he trusted. When he died in 1951, he named her as one of his three literary executors. She translated his major work, Philosophical Investigations, from German into English in 1953. This translation became the standard English version and is still read today. She married the philosopher Peter Geach in 1941. They had seven children. She held positions at Oxford for almost twenty years, then moved to Cambridge in 1970 to take the chair in philosophy once held by Wittgenstein. She was a striking figure: she wore trousers and men's clothes in an era when this was unusual, smoked cigars, and did not take her husband's name. She died in Cambridge on 5 January 2001, aged 81.

Iris Murdoch was an Irish-British philosopher and novelist. She is one of the most important moral philosophers of the 20th century. She was also one of the most successful British novelists of her time. She published 26 novels alongside her philosophical work. She was born in 1919 in Dublin, Ireland. Her family moved to London when she was very young. She studied classics and ancient philosophy at Oxford from 1938. The Second World War interrupted her studies. She worked for the British Treasury and then for the United Nations relief agency in displaced persons camps in Europe after the war. She saw the human consequences of the war directly. The experience shaped her later thinking about moral life. In 1948 she became a philosophy fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford. She taught there for many years. In 1956 she married John Bayley, a literary critic. The marriage lasted until her death and was unconventional in many ways. She had several intense relationships with both men and women throughout her life, often while married. Her first novel, Under the Net, came out in 1954. The book was successful. She continued writing novels alongside philosophy for the rest of her career. Her novels are full of complicated relationships, moral struggles, and sudden surprising events. Some readers love them. Some find them odd. Her philosophical books include The Sovereignty of Good, one of the most loved short books in 20th-century moral philosophy. In the early 1990s, she developed Alzheimer's disease. The illness slowly destroyed her ability to think and write. She died in 1999, aged 79. Her husband John Bayley wrote a famous memoir about her decline.