Geoffrey Brennan

Geoffrey Brennan (September 15, 1944 – July 29, 2022) was an Australian philosopher. He served as a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, professor of political science at Duke University, and a faculty member in the Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS) at the Australian National University. Brennan was also the Director of the RSSS from 1991 to 1996. Initially trained as an economist, Brennan engaged in extensive collaborations with Nobel Prize winner James M. Buchanan. He was distinguished as the first non-American president of the Public Choice Society in 2002. His academic contributions spanned rational actor theory, philosophy, and economics, and he was a member of the editorial board for the journal *Representation*. Brennan held academic roles at Australia National University and Virginia Tech. Alongside Loren Lomasky, he received the American Philosophical Association's Gregory Kavka Prize in Political Philosophy for their paper "Is There a Duty to Vote?". His accolades include an honorary doctorate in Economics from the University of St. Gallen (2002), the Distinguished Fellow Award from the Economic Society of Australia (2013), and the Gutenberg Teaching Award from Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (2018). He also held multiple fellowships at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. Beyond academia, Brennan was a golfer and a semi-professional singer. He passed away in Canberra in 2022 due to complications from acute leukemia.