Richard Popkin

Richard Henry Popkin (December 27, 1923 – April 14, 2005) was an American academic philosopher who specialized in the history of enlightenment philosophy and early modern anti-dogmatism. His 1960 work *The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes* introduced one previously unrecognized influence on Western thought in the seventeenth century, the Pyrrhonian Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus. Popkin also was an internationally acclaimed scholar on Christian millenarianism and Jewish messianism. He was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York, to author Zelda Popkin and Louis Popkin. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1950 and taught at various American universities. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and president emeritus of the *Journal of the History of Philosophy*. Beyond his academic work, Popkin wrote *The Second Oswald* (1966), questioning the Warren Report's conclusion on the John F. Kennedy assassination. He died of emphysema in Santa Monica, California.