{{Short description|British scholar of Greco-Roman philosophy (1922–2010)}} {{Infobox person | name = David John Furley | birth_date = {{birth date|1922|2|24|df=yes}} | birth_place = [[Nottingham]], England | death_date = {{death date and age|2010|1|26|1922|2|24|df=yes}} | death_place = Banbury Hospital, [[Banbury]], England | alma_mater = [[Jesus College, Cambridge]] (BA, 1947) | employer = [[University College London]]<br/>[[Princeton University]] | awards = Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities (1984)<br/>[[Fellow of the British Academy]] (1990) | spouse = Diana Armstrong (m. 1948; div. 1966)<br /> Phyllis Ross (m. 1967; d. 2009) | honorific_suffix = [[Fellow of the British Academy|FBA]] }}
'''David John Furley''' [[Fellow of the British Academy|FBA]] (24 February 1922 – 26 January 2010) was a British scholar of [[ancient philosophy]] and a specialist in Greco-Roman cosmology and natural philosophy. He spent the first two decades of his academic career at [[University College London]] and the remainder at [[Princeton University]], where he became [[Ewing Professor of Greek Language and Literature]]. Furley is best known for ''Two Studies in the Greek Atomists'' (1967) and ''The Greek Cosmologists'' (1987), and for a body of shorter writings widely admired for their analytical precision and economy. He was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the [[British Academy]] in 1990.
==Early life and education==
David John Furley was born on 24 February 1922 in [[Nottingham]],<ref name="wildberg">[[Christian Wildberg]], "Remembering David Furley," ''Princeton Classics Newsletter'' (Spring 2010), p. 10.</ref> the son of Athelstan Willis Furley, a hosiery manufacturer.<ref name="knifton">John Knifton, "The Carvings in the Tower (6)," johnknifton.com, 27 February 2022, https://johnknifton.com/2022/02/27/the-carvings-in-the-tower-5/.</ref> He attended [[Nottingham High School]], where he proved an exceptionally gifted pupil, served as Captain of the School, attained the rank of Company Sergeant Major in the Officers' Training Corps, and was a regular player for the First XI cricket team.<ref name="knifton" /> In May 1940, shortly before leaving, he was among a group of senior boys who climbed the school's tower and carved their names on a stone window sill.<ref name="knifton" />
Furley left Nottingham having won an Open Scholarship and City of Nottingham Scholarship to read [[Classics]] at [[Jesus College, Cambridge]].<ref name="knifton" /> His studies at Cambridge were interrupted by the [[Second World War]], during which he served in the [[Royal Artillery]], seeing active service in Bombay and subsequently in Burma, where he rose to the rank of Captain.<ref name="wildberg" /> After the war he returned to Cambridge to complete his degree, graduating with first-class honours in 1947.<ref name="wildberg" /> He later became an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College.<ref name="sedley">[[David Sedley]], "Professor David Furley: Celebrated scholar of Greco-Roman philosophy," ''[[The Independent]]'', 30 April 2010, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-david-furley-celebrated-scholar-of-grecoroman-philosophy-1958566.html.</ref>
==Career== ===University College London (1947–1966)===
In 1947 Furley took up an assistant lectureship in the Departments of Greek and Latin at [[University College London]],<ref name="sedley" /> following promotions up to the level of reader before departing for Princeton.<ref name="sedley" /> During this period he produced his first major publication, a [[Loeb Classical Library]] edition and translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian ''[[On the Cosmos]]'' (Harvard University Press, 1955).<ref name="sedley" /> He was a co-founder of the Southern Association for Ancient Philosophy,<ref name="lcap">London Centre for Ancient Philosophy (L-CAP), "Our History," lcap.ics.sas.ac.uk, 2020, https://lcap.ics.sas.ac.uk/our-history/.</ref> and in September 2005 was one of few survivors from its inaugural meeting to gather in Oxford for its fiftieth anniversary.<ref name="sedley" /> It was at UCL that Furley began the work on [[Epicureanism]] and [[atomism]] that would culminate in his landmark 1967 monograph.<ref name="lcap" /> A colleague, [[A. A. Long]], ran an influential seminar on [[Stoicism]] at the [[Institute of Classical Studies]] in 1967–68 that formed the basis for Long's ''Problems in Stoicism'' (1971); Long later collaborated with his former UCL doctoral student [[David Sedley]] on ''The Hellenistic Philosophers'' (1987).<ref name="lcap" />
===Princeton University (1966–1992)===
In 1966, Furley was appointed professor at [[Princeton University]], where from 1974 he held the [[Ewing Professorship of Greek Language and Literature]],<ref name="sedley" /> succeeding [[John V. A. Fine (1903–1987)|John V. A. Fine]].<ref name="Professorships">{{cite web |title=Professorships |url=https://dof.princeton.edu/about/endowed-professorships-preceptorships-fellowships/professorships |website=Office of the Dean of the Faculty |publisher=Princeton University |access-date=2026-05-21}}</ref> He directed the Program in Classical Philosophy from 1969 to 1982<ref name="sedley" /> and chaired the Department of Classics from 1982 to 1985.<ref name="wildberg" /> He was also editor of the journal ''[[Phronesis (journal)|Phronesis]]'' from 1968 to 1972.<ref name="sedley" /> In collaboration first with [[Gregory Vlastos]] and Terry Penner, and later with [[Michael Frede]], [[John M. Cooper]], and [[Alexander Nehamas]], he helped build Princeton's reputation as a world-leading centre for the study of ancient philosophy.<ref name="sedley" />
In 1984, Furley became the first classicist to receive Princeton's Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.<ref name="wildberg" /> At the award ceremony, President [[William G. Bowen]] remarked that Furley had "established an international reputation as a distinguished scholar and earned the wide respect of his students and fellow faculty members at Princeton as an exceptionally fine teacher and colleague."<ref name="mcdonald">Josh McDonald, "Professors recognized for humanities studies," ''[[The Daily Princetonian]]'', vol. 108, no. 67, 11 May 1984.</ref>
During his career Furley served as president of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy<ref name="wildberg" /> and as chairman of the International Committee of the Symposium Aristotelicum.<ref name="wildberg" /> He was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the [[British Academy]] in 1990.<ref name="sedley" />
Furley retired from Princeton in 1992, an occasion marked with a conference in his honour at the [[Institute of Classical Studies]].<ref name="sedley" /> Not long after, he returned to residence in England, settling at [[Charlbury]] in Oxfordshire.<ref name="sedley" />
==Scholarship==
Furley was considered one of the twentieth century's outstanding scholars of Greco-Roman philosophy.<ref name="sedley" /> While his published output was modest by contemporary standards, many became standard references in the field.<ref name="sedley" /> The most recurrent motif of his work was a systematic contrast between two radically opposed philosophical and scientific worldviews, [[atomism]] and [[Aristotelianism]], with his analyses typically shedding equal light on both traditions.<ref name="sedley" />
Furley's most celebrated book, ''Two Studies in the Greek Atomists'' (Princeton University Press, 1967), took two central themes of Epicurean atomism and reconstructed the origins of each through close study of the relevant texts in relation to their Aristotelian background.<ref name="sedley" /> Described as a model of lucid and judicious scholarship, the monograph was credited by David Sedley with bringing [[Epicureanism]] into the philosophical mainstream.<ref name="sedley" />
Furley planned ''The Greek Cosmologists'' as a major two-volume synthesis. Volume I (Cambridge University Press, 1987) appeared to wide recognition,<ref name="wildberg" /> but the eagerly awaited second volume never followed.<ref name="sedley" /> Most of his articles were collected in ''Cosmic Problems: Essays on Greek and Roman Philosophy of Nature'' (Cambridge University Press, 1989). He also co-authored with J. S. Wilkie a fully annotated edition, ''Galen on Respiration and the Arteries'' (1984), translated parts of [[John Philoponus]]'s commentary on Aristotle's ''Physics'' for the [[Ancient Commentators on Aristotle]] series (1991), and edited the second volume of the ''Routledge History of Philosophy'' (1997).<ref name="sedley" />
==Personal life==
Furley married Diana Armstrong in 1948; the marriage ended in divorce in 1966.<ref name="sedley" /> They had two sons, John and William, the latter himself a classical scholar.<ref name="sedley" /> In 1967 he married Phyllis Ross, who died in 2009.<ref name="sedley" />. At Princeton, Furley and Phyllis were active figures in and beyond the Classics community, known especially for the play-readings they held at their home in [[Ringoes, New Jersey]] over a period of twenty-seven years.<ref name="sedley" />
Furley was known among colleagues and students for his wit, modesty, and dry sense of humor. In 1978, while traveling to Greece for ceremonies marking the 2,300th anniversary of Aristotle’s death, he reportedly explained his trip to an Olympic Airways ticket agent, who replied: “Oh, yes—[[Aristotle Onassis|Onassis]].”<ref>{{cite news |last=Heilner |first=Sam |title=Sunday’s People |work=The Boston Globe |date=August 13, 1978 |page=2}}</ref>
Furley died on 26 January 2010 at Banbury Hospital, [[Banbury]], following a long illness.<ref name="wildberg" /> His funeral was held on 12 February 2010 in [[Charlbury]], near Oxford.<ref name="wildberg" /> [[Lucretius]] was among Furley's intellectual heroes, and Lucretius's repudiation of the fear of death was read at Furley's funeral.<ref name="sedley" />
==Selected bibliography==
* {{cite book |last=Furley |first=David J. |year=1955 |title=Aristotle: On the Cosmos |series=Loeb Classical Library |publisher=Harvard University Press}} * {{cite book |last=Furley |first=David J. |year=1967 |title=Two Studies in the Greek Atomists |publisher=Princeton University Press}} * {{cite book |last=Furley |first=David J. |author2=Wilkie, J. S. |year=1984 |title=Galen on Respiration and the Arteries |publisher=Princeton University Press}} * {{cite book |last=Furley |first=David J. |year=1987 |title=The Greek Cosmologists, Volume I |publisher=Cambridge University Press}} * {{cite book |last=Furley |first=David J. |year=1989 |title=Cosmic Problems: Essays on Greek and Roman Philosophy of Nature |publisher=Cambridge University Press}} * {{cite book |last=Furley |first=David J. |author2=[[Alexander Nehamas|Nehamas, Alexander]] |year=1994 |title=Aristotle's "Rhetoric": Philosophical Essays |publisher=Princeton University Press}} * {{cite book |last=Furley |first=David J. |year=1997 |title=Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume II: From Aristotle to Augustine |publisher=Routledge}}
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
* [https://classics.princeton.edu Princeton Department of Classics] * [https://lcap.ics.sas.ac.uk/our-history/ London Centre for Ancient Philosophy: Our History]
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[[Category:1922 births]] [[Category:2010 deaths]] [[Category:People from Nottingham]] [[Category:Alumni of Jesus College, Cambridge]] [[Category:Fellows of the British Academy]] [[Category:British classical scholars]] [[Category:Scholars of ancient Greek philosophy]] [[Category:Princeton University faculty]] [[Category:Classical scholars of Princeton University]] [[Category:Ewing Professors of Greek]] [[Category:Historians of philosophy]] [[Category:20th-century British historians]] [[Category:People educated at Nottingham High School]] [[Category:Academics of University College London]]