G. E. M. Anscombe

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe was born 18 March 1919 and studied under Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge, becoming the foremost authority on his work - she edited and translated Philosophical Investigations and much of what followed. A fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, and later a professor at Cambridge, she worked across philosophy of mind, action, language, logic, and ethics, anchoring her thought in analytical Thomism. In 1957 she published Intention, a monograph Donald Davidson called "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle" and now considered foundational to contemporary philosophy of action and practical reason. A year later her essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced consequentialism into analytic vocabulary and set the terms for the revival of virtue ethics. She died 5 January 2001, leaving the field reordered in her wake.