David Lewis (1941)

 early life and education

Lewis was born in Oberlin, Ohio, to John D. Lewis, a Professor of Government at Oberlin College, and Ruth Ewart Kelloggs Lewis, a distinguished medieval historian. The formidable intellect for which he was known later in his life was already manifest during his years at Oberlin High School, when he attended college lectures in chemistry. He went on to Swarthmore College and spent a year at Oxford (1959–1960), where he was tutored by Iris Murdoch and attended lectures by Gilbert Ryle, H. P. Grice, P. F. Strawson, and J. L. Austin. It was his year at Oxford that played a seminal role in his decision to study philosophy, and which made him the quintessentially analytic philosopher that he would soon become. Lewis went on to receive his Ph.D from Harvard in 1967, where he studied under W. V. O. Quine, many of whose views he came to repudiate. It was there that his connection with Australia was first established when he took a seminar with J. J. C. Smart, a leading Australian philosopher. "I taught David Lewis," Smart would say in later years, "Or rather, he taught me."