Charles D. Parsons

Charles D. Parsons of Cambridge died on April 19th, 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of 91, after a brief illness. He was born just across the Charles River in Cambridge on April 13, 1933, and while he traveled widely in the intervening years he remained attached to the Boston area where, in the end, he spent the greater part of his life. The son of Talcott and Helen Parsons, both of whom worked at Harvard University, he grew up in suburban Belmont. He showed an early ability for and love of mathematics, which he went on to study at Harvard, graduating in 1954. A subsequent year at King’s College, Cambridge, allowed him to follow his developing interest in philosophy and also, on excursions to Continental Europe, in Germany and the German language, which he loved to read and speak. On his return to the United States he completed a Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard under the direction of Burton Drebben and W.V. Quine (1961). After a period in the Harvard Society of Fellows he took a position at Cornell University but soon moved to New York City and Columbia University, where he went on to teach for more than twenty years. In the tumultuous year of 1968 he met and, not long after, married Marjorie Wood, a Barnard philosophy graduate who was then working for the university. They raised two children in the city but spent their summers in northern New England; in 1973 they bought a nearly two hundred year old house, “Rusty Hinges,” in the New Hampshire woods, not far from the farmhouse where he and his parents had summered. For a long time, trips there and back were seven-hour odysseys with numerous children, pets, and musical instruments packed into a balky 1970s compact sedan. Much sweat and treasure were required to keep the house standing. Still, it remained a beloved retreat until the end of his life. In 1989 he returned to the place of his birth, accepting a position back at Harvard which he held until his retirement in 2005. For his last thirty-four years he lived in Cambridge, not far from the Harvard campus. His teaching and research focused on the logical and philosophical foundations of mathematics and on the thought of Immanuel Kant, Kurt Gödel, and other mainly German philosophers. He greatly enjoyed the sociability of his colleagues and was much sought after for conferences, seminars, and visiting appointments; he had a particularly close relationship with U.C.L.A., where he taught several times. He mentored generations of students and wrote a number of important books and articles, including Mathematics in Philosophy (1983) and Mathematical Thought and its Objects (2008). At Harvard he was appointed to the Edgar Pierce professorship in philosophy formerly held by his mentor, Quine. Even in the last years of his life, when he suffered from advancing Alzheimer’s, he could display his tenacious and incredibly detailed memory for facts: the university where a former student ended up, the date of Bertrand Russell’s death or of editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, or routes through the one-way maze of Boston streets. He never lost his lively interest in the lives and careers of his friends. The staff at the memory care facility where he spent his last months remarked on his considerate courtesy and dry sense of humor. His wife Marjorie died in 2017, just short of their fiftieth anniversary. He had two sisters, Anne, who died in 1964, and Susan Cramer, who survives him. He is also survived by his children, Jotham and Sylvia, two grandchildren, Charlotte and Nathaniel, and two nephews, David and John Cramer.

A Memorial Service will be held in Memorial Church 1 Harvard Yard  Cambridge, MA on Tuesday May 14th at 10:00 A.M. Relatives and friends are kindly invited. Those wishing to attend should contact Jotham or Sylvia (sylviap19@gmail.com) ahead of time for information on accessing the Yard.

In lieu of flowers please send contributions to American Farmland Trust (farmland.org/donate).

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