Maxwell John Cresswell (born 19 November 1939) is a New Zealand philosopher and logician, known for his work in

modal logic Modal logic is a collection of formal systems developed to represent statements about necessity and possibility. It plays a major role in philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and natural language semantics. Modal logics extend other ...

.''Festschrift for Max Cresswell on the occasion of his 65th birthday.'' In: ''Logique et Analyse.'' Number 181, March 2003 (published November 2004). See the introduction by Thomas Forster.Max Cresswell, School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations, Victoria U. of Wellington
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Education and career

Cresswell received his B.A. in 1960 and M.A. in 1961 from the

University of New Zealand The University of New Zealand was New Zealand's sole degree-granting university from 1874 to 1961. It was a collegiate university embracing several constituent institutions at various locations around New Zealand. After it was dissolved in 196 ...

and then with the support of a Commonwealth Scholarship attended the

Victoria University of Manchester The Victoria University of Manchester, usually referred to as simply the University of Manchester, was a university in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1851 as Owens College. In 1880, the college joined the federal Victoria University. Afte ...

, where he received in 1964 his PhD under the supervision of A. N. Prior. Cresswell's thesis was titled ''General and Specific Logics of Functions of Propositions''. After returning to New Zealand, Cresswell was at the Victoria University of Wellington, from 1963 to 1967 as a lecturer, from 1968 to 1972 as a senior lecturer (also receiving in 1972 Lit.D. from the Victoria University), becoming a reader in 1973, and then a professor from 1974 to 2000, interrupted by several visiting professorships. In 2001 he became professor emeritus and a member of the Centre for Logic, Language and Computation, Victoria University of Wellington and has been a visiting or fixed-term professor at several universities. Cresswell's research deals with the philosophy of logic,

and formal semantics. He has also published on

ancient Greek philosophy Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman Empire ...

, on the logic of the nineteenth century, and on the philosophy of

John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...

. With his colleague and former teacher G. E. Hughes, Cresswell was the co-author of ''An Introduction to Modal Logic'', London, Methuen, 1968); this was the first modern textbook on modal logic and introduced many students to

Kripke semantics Kripke semantics (also known as relational semantics or frame semantics, and often confused with possible world semantics) is a formal semantics for non-classical logic systems created in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Saul Kripke and André Jo ...

Publications

Monographs and collections

* with G. E. Hughes, ''An Introduction to Modal Logic'', London, Methuen, 1968, German trans.: ''Einführung in die Modallogik''. Berlin, New York : de Gruyter, 1978 * Logics and Languages, London, Methuen, 1973, German trans.: ''Die Sprachen der Logik und die Logik der Sprache'', Berlin, New York : de Gruyter, 1979 * with G. E. Hughes, ''A Companion to Modal Logic'', London, Methuen, 1984 * ''Structured Meanings: The Semantics of Propositional Attitudes'', Bradford Books/MIT Press, 1985 * ''Adverbial Modification, Dordrecht'', Reidel, 1985 * ''Semantical Essays: Possible Worlds and Their Rivals'', Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988 * ''Entities and Indices'', Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1990 * ''Language in the World'', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994 * ''Semantic Indexicality'', Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1996 * with G. E. Hughes, ''A New Introduction to Modal Logic'', London, Routledge, 1996

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cresswell, Max 1939 births New Zealand logicians New Zealand philosophers University of New Zealand alumni Alumni of the University of Manchester Victoria University of Wellington faculty Living people