MARCUS, RUTH BARCAN

MARCUS, RUTH BARCAN (1921– ), U.S. logician and philosopher who played a key role in many of the philosophical debates of the second half of the 20th century. Born and educated in New York City, Ruth Barcan received her B.A. in mathematics and philosophy from New York University in 1941. After her marriage to Jules Alexander Marcus, she earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale in 1946. While raising her four children, she held various postdoctoral fellowships and visiting positions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1953–54). In 1957, she became an assistant professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago; two years later she was promoted to associate professor. From 1964 to 1970, she served as professor of philosophy and department chair at the newly established University of Illinois at Chicago, building up her department to attain national recognition. After three years as professor at Northwestern University (1970–73), she returned to Yale in 1973 and remained there as Reuben Post Halleck Professor until her retirement in 1992. Thereafter, she continued as a senior research scholar at Yale and as distinguished visiting professor at the University of California at Irvine. Widely recognized as a leading figure in the field of philosophical logic, Barkan was well known for her contributions to modal logic, especially the Barkan formula, as well as her work on the philosophy of logic and language, epistemology, and ethics. She published numerous articles and essays over a period of 50 years, many of which appeared in the highly regarded collection of her works, entitled Modalities (1993). She received many prestigious awards and fellowships, including fellow of National Science Foundation (1963–64); the Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois (1968–68); the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (1979); Wolfson College, Oxford (1985–86); Clare Hall, Cambridge (1988); and the National Humanities Center (1992–93), as well as the Medal of the College de France (1986). The University of Illinois awarded her an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 1995. Marcus was actively involved in many professional organizations, serving as president of the Association for Symbolic Logic (1983–1986) and vice president of the Institut International de Philosophie (1989–92), as well as chair of the National Board of Officers of the American Philosophical Association (1977–83). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: P.E. Hyman and D. Dash Moore (ed.). Jewish Women in America, 2 (1997), 889–90; W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Modality, Morality, and Belief: Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus (1995). (Harriet Pass Freidenreich (2nd ed.)