Nicholas Rescher *51

Princeton’s youngest-ever philosophy Ph.D., Nicholas died Jan. 5, 2024, in Pittsburgh. He was 95.

Born in Hagen, Germany, July 15, 1928, Nicholas came to the United States in 1938 to escape Nazi Germany. A mathematics major at Queens College, Nicholas earned his doctorate in philosophy from Princeton in 1951 at age 22. After serving in the U.S. Marines during the Korean War, he briefly worked at the RAND Corp.

Nicholas entered academia at Lehigh, then taught at the University of Pittsburgh for 60 years. His scholarly contributions range from rediscovery of the medieval Arabic theory of temporal modalities to innovation of the “Rescher quantifier” in symbolic logic and include the recovery of specifications for G.W. Leibniz’s cipher machine of the 1670s.

Twenty-two of Nicholas’ philosophical books were translated into 11 languages. He was awarded honorary degrees by eight universities on three continents and received the Aquinas Medal of the American Catholic Philosophical Association and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Nicholas Rescher Medal for Contributions to Systematic Philosophy was inaugurated by the University of Pittsburgh, and the American Philosophical Association created a Nicholas Rescher Prize.

Nicholas is survived by his children, Elizabeth, Mark, Owen, and Catherine, and three grandchildren.

Graduate alumni memorials are prepared by the APGA.