Profession: philosopher

Locke’s empirically-based account of the mind (like his good friend Newton’s of the physical universe) was a corner-stone of the Enlightenment. His acquaintance and scientific mentor Boyle probably introduced Descartes’ ideas to him; he in turn influenced Rousseau and Voltaire. Wren, Hooke and Dryden were fellow school-students. He was closely involved with the experimentalist group around John Wilkins in Oxford – Willis, Lower and Wren, and Boyle and his assistant Hooke, were members. Huygens confirmed the soundness of Newton’s maths for him; Wycherley was a close friend. Locke told Boyle that miners’ “terrible apprehensions” stopped him getting his barometer underground.

Ryle, a mainstay of British philosophy, was known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, and coined the phrase ‘the ghost in the machine’. Austin was a colleague at Oxford, Ayer and Dennett (of whom he was very fond) among his students. He supervised Adorno’s thesis; they had a productive relationship despite their very different philosophical heritages. Wittgenstein was a friend — they went on walking holidays together — and said Ryle was one of only two people to understand him (they later fell out, Wittgenstein calling him a charlatan). He told Strawson that he read all of Jane Austen’s novels every year.

One of the key philosophers of the earlier 20th C. If Russell was Whitehead’s protégé (they collaborated for six years), so Wittgenstein, arriving as Russell’s PhD student and rapidly identified by him as a genius, was his. Russell met Moore at Cambridge, had a pivotal meeting with Peano in Paris, pointed out a flaw to the thunderstruck Frege, and named his son after his friend Conrad. He planned some lectures with Lawrence, was a friendly critic to Dewey, and was helped out by Santayana. Shaw, the Webbs, Keynes and Woolf were among his many friends, Quine and Carnap among his many correspondents.

Strawson emerged from a group at Oxford University dominated by the twin influences of Ryle (who supported him in his career) and Austin (whom he famously got the better of, and whose influence he diminished); he responded warmly to Ryle (whom he succeeded), but found Austin aloof. Strawson also took on Russell and, their lifelong friendship notwithstanding, Quine; Quine joined in on one of Davidson and Strawson’s panel discussions.