David Neil Sedley is the seventh Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy

Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy

The Laurence Professorship of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University was established in 1930 as one of the offices endowed by the bequest of Sir Perceval Maitland Laurence; it is the oldest chair of ancient philosophy in the world....

 at Cambridge University.

Sedley was educated at Trinity College, Oxford

Trinity College, Oxford

The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford, of the foundation of Sir Thomas Pope , or Trinity College for short, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It stands on Broad Street, next door to Balliol College and Blackwells bookshop,...

 where he was awarded a first class honours degree

Academic degree

An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...

 in Literae Humaniores

Literae Humaniores

Literae Humaniores is the name given to an undergraduate course focused on Classics at Oxford and some other universities.The Latin name means literally "more humane letters", but is perhaps better rendered as "Advanced Studies", since humaniores has the sense of "more refined" or "more learned",...

 in 1969. He was awarded a PhD

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 in 1974 by University College London

University College London

University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

 for a text, translation and commentary on Book XXVIII of Epicurus

Epicurus

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works...

' On Nature.

Since 1976 Sedley has been a fellow

Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

 of Christ's College, Cambridge

Christ's College, Cambridge

Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.With a reputation for high academic standards, Christ's College averaged top place in the Tompkins Table from 1980-2000 . In 2011, Christ's was placed sixth.-College history:...

; from 1996 he was Professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University before in July 2000 being elevated to the Laurence Professorship of Ancient Philosophy.

He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 (September 1981 - March 1982), University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 (1984 and 2004), Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 (1990), and Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 (2001).

He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in July 1994.

Publications

• The Hellenistic Philosophers (with A. A. Long), Cambridge 1987
• Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, Cambridge 1998
• The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy, Cambridge 2003
• Plato's
  Plato
  Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
  
   Cratylus
  Cratylus
  Cratylus was an ancient Athenian philosopher from late 5th century BC, mostly known through his portrayal in Plato's dialogue Cratylus. Little is known of Cratylus or his mentor Heraclitus . According to Cratylus at 402a, Heraclitus proclaimed that one cannot step twice into the same stream...
  
  , Cambridge 2003
• The Midwife of Platonism. Text and Subtext in Plato's Theaetetus
  Theaetetus (dialogue)
  The Theaetetus is one of Plato's dialogues concerning the nature of knowledge. The framing of the dialogue begins when Euclides tells his friend Terpsion that he had written a book many years ago based on what Socrates had told him of a conversation he'd had with Theaetetus when Theaetetus was...
  
  , Oxford 2004
• Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity, Berkeley and Los Angeles 2007
• Pyrrhonists, Patricians, Platonizers. Hellenistic Philosophy in the Period 155-86 BC (edited with A.M. Ioppolo), Naples, 2007