Nathan Salmon

Nathan U. Salmon

Born	January 2, 1951 Los Angeles, California

Era	20th-/21st-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Philosophy of language, philosophy of logic
Notable ideas	Millianism (Mill's theory of meaning)
Influences Gotlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Alonzo Church, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke

Nathan U. Salmon (né Nathan Salmon Ucuzoglu in 1951) is an American philosopher in the Analytic tradition, specializing in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of logic.

Salmon was born January 2, 1951 in Los Angeles to a working-class family of Sephardi Jews of Spanish-Turkish heritage. He is the grandson of archivist Emily Sene (née Emily Perez) and oud player Isaac Sene. Salmon attended Lincoln Elementary School in Torrance, California through eighth grade, where he was a classmate and friend of the child prodigy, James Newton Howard. Salmon graduated from North High School (Torrance) in 1969.

The first person in his family to go to college, Salmon graduated from El Camino College (1971) and from the University of California, Los Angeles (B.A. 1973, M.A. 1974, Ph.D. 1979). At UCLA he studied with Tyler Burge, Alonzo Church, Keith Donnellan, Donald Kalish, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke, and Yiannis Moschovakis. Salmon was assistant professor of philosophy at Princeton University from 1978 to 1982. In 1984, the Council of Graduate Schools awarded him the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities, for his book, Reference and Essence (1981), which was based on his UCLA doctoral dissertation. His second book, Frege's Puzzle (1986), was selected by Scott Soames for a literary website as one of the best five books on the philosophy of language.