Philosopher and colleague of Ludwig Wittgenstein dies: GH von Wright (d. 16 June 2003)

The Finnish philosopher GH von Wright will be greatly missed as one of the leading European philosophers of the century. His patrons, following a year in Cambridge, had been CD Broad, GE Moore, and of course Wittgenstein himself. In 1947, he returned, after a gap of eight years, to Cambridge as a visiting lecturer. Wittgenstein, in due course, nominated Von Wright as his successor as Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University. He was incumbent in Cambridge when Wittgenstein died there. And so in 1951 von Wright returned to Helsinki. Von Wright's third intellectual base was Cornell University, after Helsinki and Cambridge. Over decades, he built up a superlative position in Modal philosophy and inductive logic teaching drew him back to moral philosophy for a time. As Professor-at-Large, at Cornell University, he expounded a deep wisdom.