Catherine Wilson is a specialist in the history of early-modern philosophy. Her areas of particular interest are moral and social theory, evolutionary psychology, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century history and philosophy of science, and philosophy of literature. She is the author of two classic books: Leibniz's Metaphysics: A Historical and Comparative Study and The Invisible World: Early Modern Philosophy and the Invention of the Microscope, and she recently published Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory and Descartes's Meditations: An Introduction. Furthermore, she has edited several volumes of essays, contributed to many books, published in numerous journals, and was the editor of History of Philosophy Quarterly and Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Professor Wilson earned her B.A. from Yale, her B.Phil. from Oxford, and her Ph.D. from Princeton, and she comes to The Graduate Center from the University of British Columbia. She has also served on the faculty at the universities of Oregon and Alberta, has had visiting faculty appointments at Barnard College and Notre Dame University, and was a visiting fellow at Cambridge University and Universitaet Konstanz, Germany.

Photo: Don Pollard