Martha Kneale

Martha Hurst was born in Skipton, Yorkshire. She obtained her B.A. degree from Somerville College, Oxford in 1933. Martha was a tutor and Fellow in philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1936 to 1966. Martha married William Kneale in 1938; they had two children, George (born 1942) and Jane (married name Heal; born 1946). She was one of the first women fellows at Oxford University to maintain a fellowship after marriage. Kneale is best known for a 1962 book that she co-wrote with her husband, William, The Development of Logic. She wrote the chapters on ancient Greek logic. The "History" is commonly referred to in the academic world simply as "Kneale and Kneale". It was the only major history of logic available in English in the mid-twentieth century, and the first major history of logic in English since The Development of Symbolic Logic published in 1906 by A. T. Shearman. The treatise has been a standard work in the history of logic for decades. Kneale published five papers between 1934 and 1950. The one on metaphysical and logical necessity, from 1938, considers the metaphysics of time and offers an explanation of ‘the necessity of the past’. She also worked on early modern philosophy, particularly Leibniz and Spinoza and the metaphysical implications of their thought. She was also interested in parapsychology, writing a number of papers on this topic. She was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1971 to 1972. == Publications ==