Irving Singer

Irving Singer (December 24, 1925 – February 1, 2015) was an American professor of philosophy who was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 55 years and wrote over 20 books.

He was the author of books on various topics, including cinema, love, sexuality, and the philosophy of George Santayana.

He also wrote on the subject of film, including writings about the work of film directors Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock.

Singer was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on December 24, 1925; his parents were Isadore and Nettie Stromer Singer, Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary, who owned a grocery store in Coney Island.

Singer skipped three grades in school, graduating from Manhattan's Townsend Harris High School at age 15.

He entered the U.S. Army, serving in World War II, writing History of the 210th Field Artillery Group, which was published by the Army in 1945.

After studying for a short time at Brooklyn College before the war and attending Biarritz American University in Paris just after the war, Singer went to Harvard University on the G.I. Bill, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. in 1948.

He did his graduate studies at Oxford University and Harvard, receiving his PhD in philosophy from Harvard in 1952.

Singer taught briefly at Harvard, Cornell University, the University of Michigan, and Johns Hopkins University.

He joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958, first as a lecturer, but then promoted to associate professor in 1959, and full professor at 1967.

Among the many subjects Singer taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology were: Philosophy of Love in the Western World, Film as Visual and Literary Philosophy, and The Nature of Creativity.

He died in 2015, aged 89.