Even though he never received his Ph.D. Dreben is one of the most highly respected and sought-after members of the Philosophy Department--by professors and graduate students alike. And as head of the Society of Fellows, he runs the select Harvard organization that brings highly promising graduate students here for three free no-strings-attached years of pure research.

Dreben is also a close friend of Rosovsky's and a long-standing member of the dean's small "kitchen cabinet" of academic deans. This council--which also includes, among others, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Sidney Verba '53 and Dean of the Graduate School Edward L. Keenan '57--carries much of the Faculty's administrative load.

Dreben's friendship with Rosovsky dates back to the early 1950s, when both were junior members of the Society of Fellows. After his three-year stint at the Society. Dreben went to teach at the University of Chicago for a year before returning in 1956 to Harvard's Philosophy Department, where he has been ever since.

Dreben was able to win a teaching position despite his lack of Ph.D. because of his stint in the Society of Fellows. And he says that the lack of a Ph.D. has never hurt him professionally.

Dreben's field is a combination of logic, philosophy and mathematics. But while he has published numerous articles in logic, he has published not a word in philosophy proper.

"He is one of those people who writes and sticks it in the drawer," says Hilary Putnam, Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics and Mathematical Logic. Partially because of the penchant for secrecy, colleagues say, his beliefs about philosophy are highly controversial and not entirely accepted in philosophy departments around the country.

Dreben has been at work for a number of years on reinterpreting several 20th century figures in analytic philosophy, a field "which has invented a false history of itself," says Putnam. Dreben, he says, "is lifting the rug up to see what actually happened and why."

Dreben says he isn't worried in the least about his output. The manuscripts he keeps in locked files in his Emerson Hall office are simply not ready for publication. "I keep rethinking them...I find it difficult to come to any final conclusions."

Socratic Gadfly

While Dreben may not be known for his publications, he has created a name for himself as an intense, highly original teacher.

Because he teaches only graduate-level classes these days. Dreben is all but unknown among undergraduates. But graduate students in the department say he is highly thought of--as evidenced by the disproportionate number of Ph.D. candidates in Dreben's fields.

"He calls himself mockingly 'a Socratic gadfly,'" says one Philosophy graduate student, who asked not to be identified, "but it is accurate."

"He asks the disturbing questions.... You realize that you have to come to terms with something you would like to avoid," the student adds "He is someone who shakes people up He makes people upset, but in a good way, because it makes you think," says another student of Dreben's who also asked to remain anonymous.

Dreben's teaching strategy, particularly in small classes, is to probe the sources of students' ideas, students say.

A conversation cited by University of Virginia philosopher Cora Diamond illustrates Dreben's intellectual approach.