Elizabeth Flower


Elizabeth Farquhar Flower was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. She co-authored a standard textbook on the history of philosophy, History of Philosophy in America.

Biography

Flower was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1914. At twenty-one she graduated from Wilson College with a degree in chemistry. Initially interested in medicine, she changed the focus of her studies and in 1939 received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Two years before graduating, she was appointed an assistant instructor, and eight years after graduating, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Philosophy. She received tenure in 1956, and became a full professor in 1974. She taught many students, the most prominent of whom was Martin Luther King Jr. Many of her articles were published in scientific journals, and in 1977, she published her most popular work History of Philosophy in America, and in 1994, Critique of Applied Ethics: Reflections and Recommendations. She also sporadically taught at Columbia, Hamilton College, and foreign schools in Peru, Colombia, Chile and Argentina. Professor Flower taught undergraduate ethics for many years at the University of Pennsylvania, and had a personal and long lasting effect on her students, who affectionately knew her as Betty Flower. She emphasized the impact of Scottish realism on the development of philosophy in America.