David Hugh Mellor

David Hugh Mellor was a British philosopher born in London on July 10, 1938. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and later studied chemical engineering at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he obtained his BA in 1960. His philosophical journey continued at the University of Minnesota, where he earned an MSc in 1962, minoring in Philosophy of Science under Herbert Feigl. He completed his PhD in philosophy at Cambridge in 1968, with his thesis supervised by Mary Hesse. Mellor was awarded an Sc.D. from Cambridge in 1990. His principal areas of research included metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of time. He held the position of Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and was a Fellow of Darwin College from 1971 to 2005. Mellor was recognized for his contributions to analytic philosophy and his work on concepts such as chance, time, causation, laws of nature, and properties. In 1992, he publicly criticized the decision to award an honorary degree to Jacques Derrida, calling him a "mediocre, unoriginal philosopher." Mellor served as president of the Aristotelian Society from 1992 to 1993 and was an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. He was a Fellow of the British Academy from 1983 to 2008. In retirement, he was granted the title of emeritus professor. A festschrift, "Real Metaphysics: Essays in Honour of D. H. Mellor," was published in his honor in 2003. Mellor was also known to be an amateur theatre actor. He passed away on June 21, 2020.