Margaret Dauler Wilson

Who was Margaret Dauler Wilson?

Margaret Dauler Wilson was an American philosopher and a professor of philosophy at Princeton University between 1970 and 1998. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wilson earned an A.B. from Vassar College in 1960 and received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University five years later. While at Harvard, At Harvard, she was a student of Burton Dreben. Wilson was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Harvard in 1960-61 and then studied at Oxford University in 1963-64. Wilson spent the early years of her career as an assistant professor of philosophy at Columbia University, and went on to teach at the Rockefeller Institute between 1967 and 1970.

In 1970, she joined the Princeton faculty as associate professor of philosophy. Wilson was promoted to full professor in 1975, and in 1998 was finally named Stuart Professor of Philosophy. During her tenure at Princeton she shared a department with other prominent philosophers including David Lewis, Saul Kripke, Harry Frankfurt, Gil Harman, Bas van Fraassen, Paul Benacerraf and Richard Jeffrey. Wilson taught courses in Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and other early modern philosophers as well as the Philosophy of Religion.