Hans George Herzberger *61

At 93, Hans died Jan. 30, 2026, in the Rishi Valley, India. 

Born in 1932 in Jena, Germany, Hans and family came to the U.S. in 1935. He attended Cornell as an undergraduate, then spent two years in the Army, stationed in France. Returning to the U.S., he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton in 1961. To help fund his graduate education, Hans worked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Linguistics on the world’s first computer program to analyze grammar. 

After positions at the University of California, Berkeley and Case Western Reserve, Hans joined the philosophy faculty at the University of Toronto in 1967. He studied topics such as the concept of truth, semantic paradoxes, and canonical super-language. His articles included “Dimensions of Truth” on Buridan, and “Ordinal Preference and Rational Choice,” a milestone in the erosion of the idea that rational agents are maximizers of utility. He developed his own formal theory of truth as a modification of Kripke’s, and his interests included the philosophy of Frege, and the inexpressible and the ineffable. 

In 1991, Hans moved to India, where his wife, Radhika, had opened the Rishi Valley School. Together they worked on Indian philosophy. 

Hans is survived by Radhika and their daughters Maya ’92 and Sunanda. 

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.