March 07

Born in 1225, Saint Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican priest and one of the most influential medieval philosophers. His magnum opus, the Summa Theologica, systematically integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine. He developed the concept of natural law and five proofs for the existence of God, which remain central to Catholic theology. Aquinas taught at the University of Paris and attracted a large following of students and scholars. His ideas on ethics, metaphysics, and politics laid the groundwork for Scholasticism. Canonized in 1323, he is honored as a Doctor of the Church.

Richard Montague (1930–1971) was an American mathematician and philosopher whose work bridged formal logic and linguistic theory. He developed Montague grammar, a formal system that applies mathematical rigor to natural language semantics, reshaping the study of meaning. Montague held positions at UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley, influencing fields from computer science to philosophy. His seminars attracted students worldwide and laid the groundwork for computational linguistics. His untimely death cut short a career that continues to impact logic, linguistics, and artificial intelligence.

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) was a Russian philosopher and literary theorist whose ideas on dialogism revolutionized the study of literature and language. He introduced the concept of the 'carnivalesque' to describe subversive folk humor in medieval culture, and his emphasis on multiple voices influenced disciplines from linguistics to cultural studies. Many of his writings were suppressed or circulated clandestinely during political turmoil, but he continued to produce manuscripts that survived and later reached a wider audience. Bakhtin spent years in exile before his ideas found official acceptance in Soviet academic circles after World War II. His theories on heteroglossia and polyphony remain foundational in contemporary literary criticism. His work continues to inspire scholars across humanities disciplines.