Saul Aaron Kripke (born on November 13, 1940 in Bay Shore, New York) is an American philosopher and logician, now emeritus from Princeton. He teaches as distinguished professor of philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center. Since the 1960s Kripke has been a central figure in a number of fields related to logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and set theory.

Much of his work remains unpublished or exists only as tape-recordings and privately circulated manuscripts (see "Unpublished Manuscripts and Online Lectures" below). Kripke was the recipient of the 2001 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska, Omaha (1977), Johns Hopkins University (1997), University of Haifa, Israel (1998), and the University of Pennsylvania (2005).

He is a member of the American Philosophical Society. Kripke is also an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In a recent poll conducted by philosophers Kripke was among the top ten most important philosophers of the past 200 years.

Saul Kripke is the eldest of three children born to Dorothy K. Kripke and Rabbi Myer Kripke. His father was the leader of Beth El Synagogue, the only Conservative congregation in Omaha, Nebraska.

His mother wrote Jewish educational children's books. Saul and his two sisters, Madeline and Netta, attended Dundee Grade School in Omaha and Omaha Central High School. Saul was an extraordinary child prodigy.

He wrote his first completeness theorem in modal logic at the age of 17 (and it was published when he was 18). After graduating from high school in 1958, Kripke attended Harvard University and graduated summa cum laude obtaining a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He has no other non-honorary degrees.

During his sophomore year at Harvard, Kripke taught a graduate-level logic course at nearby MIT. Upon graduation (1962) he received a Fulbright Fellowship. In 1963 he was appointed to the Society of Fellows.

For some years he taught at Harvard, moved to Rockefeller University in New York City in 1967, then to Princeton University full-time in 1977. In 1988 he received Princeton's Behrman Award for distinguished achievement in the humanities. In 2002 Kripke started teaching at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan, and was appointed a distinguished professor of philosophy there in 2003.

He was married to philosopher Margaret Gilbert.

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