Margaret Dauler Wilson

Margaret Dauler Wilson (29 January 1939 – 27 August 1998) was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Princeton University between 1970 and 1998. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wilson earned an A.B. from Vassar College in 1960 and her Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1965, where she was a student of Burton Dreben. She held positions at Columbia University and the Rockefeller Institute before joining Princeton in 1970 as the first female faculty member in its philosophy department. Promoted to full professor in 1975 and named Stuart Professor in 1998, she taught courses on early modern philosophers and the philosophy of religion. Her scholarship centered on the history of early modern philosophy, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of mind, and the theory of perception. Wilson authored "Descartes" (1978) and "Ideas and Mechanism" (1999), and co-edited "The Essential Descartes" (1969). Recognized as a leading historian of early modern philosophy, she received a Guggenheim fellowship, an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wilson was active in professional organizations, serving as vice-president of the APA's Eastern Division and president of the Leibniz Society of North America. She died at 59, and her legacy is honored through the Margaret Dauler Wilson Biennial Philosophy Conference and occasional lecture series at Princeton.