Agent TypePersonActivities & OccupationsAcademics - PhilosophyGenderMaleHistoryLen Goddard was an analytic philosopher who introduced the study of modern formal logic to Australia. Following apprenticeship to an architect, Goddard studied Mathematics and Philosophy at St Andrews University, interrupted by service in the RAF during World War Two. He studied for one year at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. The interwar influence of Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein and the logical positivists had been thoroughly absorbed as the basis, if not the future direction, of philosophical education in Anglo-American philosophy; but not in Australia. In 1956, Goddard was appointed as a lecturer at the University of New England where he introduced logic as the basis of the undergraduate curriculum and established a short-lived but influential Masters Program in Logic in 1964 with David Londey and Richard Routley, training a number of philosophers including Malcolm Rennie, Valerie McCrae (later Routley), Ross Brady, Alan Reeves and Martin Bunder. Goddard returned to St Andrews to take up the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in 1966 and in 1978 was appointed to the Boyce Gibson Chair of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. His main research addressed problems such as significance and relevance and many of his colleagues and students went on to develop non-classical logic. In addition to his published work, Goddard’s major influence on Australian philosophy came through building two research schools in logic at the Universities of New England and the University of Melbourne respectively.
Goddard, Leonard (13/02/1925-26/05/2009). University of Melbourne Archives, accessed 05/04/2026, https://archives.library.unimelb.edu.au/nodes/view/61475
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