Anil K. Gupta

Anil K. Gupta, Pitt Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, professor of history and philosophy of science, and a fellow of the University’s Center for Philosophy of Science, has been elected a 2006 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Of the 175 new fellows and 20 new foreign honorary members, Gupta is being honored along with two former U.S. presidents—George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton—and Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts; Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse, biochemist and Rockefeller University president; winners of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, drama, music, investigative reporting, and nonfiction; a former U.S. poet laureate; and a member of the French Senate.

Prior to joining Pitt in 2001, Gupta was Rudy Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University. He has served as assistant and associate professor at McGill University, associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and visiting professor at the University of Padua, Italy.

Gupta’s primary research areas are logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology, with special interest in definitions, truth, meaning, and perception. He is author of The Logic of Common Nouns (Yale University Press, 1980) and coauthor, with Pitt philosophy professor Nuel Belnap, of The Revision Theory of Truth (The M.I.T. Press, 1993).

Among his many honors are three National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for University Teachers and a Teaching Excellence Recognition Award from Indiana University. He also was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Gupta received the Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London and the Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy from Pitt.

This year’s 195 scholars, scientists, artists, and civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders come from 24 states and 13 countries. Represented among the newly elected members are more than 60 universities, a dozen corporations, as well as museums, research institutes, media outlets, and foundations.

Pitt has six other faculty members among the academy’s current approximately 4,000 American Fellows and 600 foreign honorary members: Thomas B. Starzl, transplant pioneer and Distinguished Service Professor of Surgery, elected to the academy in 1971; Adolf Grünbaum, Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy and cochair of the Center for Philosophy of Science, 1976; John Henry McDowell, University Professor of Philosophy, 1992; John S. Earman, University Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science, 1993; Robert Brandom, Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy, 2000; and Peter L. Strick, professor of neurobiology and psychiatry and codirector of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, 2004.

Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots, the academy has elected as fellows and foreign honorary members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Ben Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th century, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th century. The current membership includes more than 170 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners. An independent policy research center, the academy undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems. Current academy research focuses on science and global security, social policy, the humanities and culture, and education.