Professor
Kerr-Lawson served
with
excellence
as
a
faculty
member
in
both
Philosophy
and
Pure Mathematics
at
Waterloo
for
nearly
40
years
from
1958
to
1996.
He
took
on
many
crucial
roles,
serving
as
Department
Chair
(Mathematics),
Senate
Executive
Committee,
and
the
University
Board
of
Governors.
Since
Angus's
retirement,
his
work
in
the
field
of
American philosophy,
always
respected,
has
increasingly
been
recognized
as
foundational
to
aspects of
the
field.
He
was a
distinguished,
internationally
known
scholar
of
the
mathematics
and logic
of
Charles
Sanders
Peirce,
and
of
the
philosophy
of
Baruch
Spinoza.
He
is
best
known, though,
for
his
extensive
work
on
the
philosophy
of
George
Santayana.
It
is
no
exaggeration
to
say
that
Angus
was
one
of
the
top
few
living
English
language scholars
of
Santayana.
Indeed,
it
is
rare
to
encounter
an English-language
book
or
journal
article
on
Santayana
that
doesn't
engage
Angus, either
by
thanking
him
in
the
acknowledgements,
or
by
directly
focusing
its
attention
on
his work.
Thus
the
Society
for
the
Advancement
of
American
Philosophy
honoured
Angus
for
his
contributions
to
the
field
in
2008,
while
the
journal Transactions
of
the
Charles
S
Peirce Society published
a
special
issue
devoted
to
his
work
in
2009.
Angus
published
a
substantial
body
of
peer-reviewed
philosophy
journal articles
on
central
figures
in
19th
and
early
20th-century
American
philosophy.
He
also
contributed
book
chapters
on
Peirce
and Santayana
to
collections
edited
by
some
of
the
most
distinguished
living
scholars
of
American philosophy.
Yet
the
larger
component of
his
philosophical
work
appeared
elsewhere
–
in Overheard
in
Seville,
the bulletin
of
the
Santayana
Society,
which
he
himself
edited
from
1983
to
2006.
In
this
journal he
published
24
articles
between
1983
and
2009.
Overheard
in
Seville is
the
primary
locus for
scholarship
on
Santayana.
Without
this
journal
and
Angus's
tireless
stewardship
of it,
Santayana
scholarship
would
be
decades
behind
where
it
is
today.
Angus was a very fine scholar and a respected member of the university community. His intellectual generosity and great collegiality will not be forgotten by those fortunate enough to have worked or studied with him.