Dates

• Existence: 1855 - 1935

Biography

William Ritchie Sorley (1855-1935), philosopher, was born at Selkirk on 4 November 1855. He entered Edinburgh University when about fifteen years old, and after taking his degree, he studied theology for several years at New College, Edinburgh, Tübingen, and Berlin, with a view to entering the ministry, but was not ordained. At the age of twenty-four he began a further course of study, in moral science, at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first class in the moral sciences tripos of 1882. Sorley was elected into a fellowship at Trinity in 1883, and from 1882 until 1887 he lectured in the university and elsewhere on ethics. In 1888 he became professor of logic and philosophy at University College, Cardiff, where he remained until 1894. In 1894 Sorley was appointed regius professor of moral philosophy at Aberdeen University. In 1900 he succeeded Henry Sidgwick in the Knightbridge chair of moral philosophy at Cambridge: this post he held until his resignation in 1933. He was elected a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in 1901. He died at his home, St Giles House, Chesterton Lane, Cambridge, on 28 July 1935.

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