Gregory Vlastos was born on 27 July 1907 in Istanbul, Turkey. He transformed classical philosophy by applying techniques of modern analytic philosophy to evaluate Plato and Socrates. Lecturer at Queens University, Ontario, he moved to Cornell in 1948. He was appointed Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton in 1955, and after retiring, began one of the most productive periods of his career. From 1976, he was Mills Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley and was made Distinguished Professorial Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1983.
Twice awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, he was Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1988, he gave the British Academy’s Master-Mind Lecture. Many of his students became important scholars of ancient philosophy including T. Irwin, R. Kraut, P. Woodruff, and A. Nehamas. Notable works include Christian Faith and Democracy (1939), The Philosophy of Socrates (1970), Platonic Studies (1973), Plato’s Universe (1975), and Studies in Greek Philosophy, 2 vols. (1994), posthumously published.
