P. F. Strawson was born in London in 1919. After serving as a captain in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during World War Two he was appointed a fellow of University College Oxford in 1948. He first gained philosophical fame at the age of 29 in 1950, when he criticised Bertrand Russell's renowned Theory of Descriptions for failing to do justice to the richness of ordinary language. He was Waynflete Professor at Oxford from 1968-1987 and was knighted in 1977. He died in 2006.