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More on Leigh Cauman

Brian Leiter

Philosopher Allen Hazen (formerly Melbourne, now teaching at Alberta) writes:

It is perhaps worth noting that Leigh Cauman (under her maiden name, Steinhardt) was Quine's first Ph.D. supervisee (at "Radcliffe College," Harvard University in those days not giving degrees under its own name to women), in 1940.  Her dissertation was about "the variable" and semantics– I think that Quine's well-known emphasis on the analogy between variables and pronouns was something she also stressed.  I am sure that student learned from teacher and also teacher from student: I have no idea to what, if any, degree Quine's ideas should be attributed to "Miss Steinhardt," who is credited in footnotes with a few minor improvements to his "Mathematical Logic."
 
Mrs. Cauman believed that a male philosopher writing a thesis under Quine would have had more opportunities for a (non-adjunct, non-editorial) academic career than she had: doubtless wanting to live in the same city as her husband (who was, I think, an art historian, though I am not sure of that) limited her ability to seek teaching appointments.
 
I was never officially affiliated with the Columbia philosophy department, but often called on it when visiting family in the neighborhood.  My sense is that Leigh's general friendliness and generosity contributed a great deal to the sense of a philosophy "community" there.
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2 responses to “More on Leigh Cauman”

  1. Peter Ludlow

    I TA'd for Leigh Cauman's logic class once in the early 80s. I would say that hands down she was the best logic teacher I have ever seen, because her exposition was tight but she also understood when the students were not getting something. That is, she didn't need to stick to the script if students were getting left behind.

    I believe that one of her de facto functions at Columbia was serving as Morgenbesser's in house therapist, although others know more about that than I do. My overriding memory of her is when she would slip into talks or classes and sit in back smoking her cigarillos and ashing into her little turtle ashtray (she lifted the shell of the turtle to ash in the turtle).

    I too recall that her husband had been an art historian. Once I was at her apartment for something (delivering graded exams maybe?) and she showed me what looked like primitive paintings of cave animals on the wall. She said her husband had done those. She had read very widely; I remember lots of conversations about art.

    As a grad student I thought she was badass cool. I'm sticking with that assessment.

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  2. Peter Ludlow

    Oh, and I have an important addendum. Once I sat next to Leigh at an APA talk that Arthur Danto was giving — I'm thinking it was a presidential address or something — and she was incensed by the fact that Danto had gone on for so long. I'll never forget what she said: "Arthur babbled on like a babbling brook… and I'm going to tell him that!" And there is no doubt in my mind that she *did* tell him.

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