Gwilym Ellis Lane Owen was a major force in the post–World War II upsurge of analytically oriented philosophical work on ancient philosophy. The author of articles of enduring value, the subject of much discussion and controversy, many of them among the classics of the philosophical study of pre-Socratic philosophy, Plato, and Aristotle, he was concerned principally with the logic of argument, metaphysics, and philosophy of language; he had no substantive interests in ethics, political theory, or aesthetics. He understood the ancient philosophers as engaged in conceptual investigations of live philosophical interest. Raised in a Welsh family in Portsmouth, England, he matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1940, completing his bachelor of arts degree in 1948, after war service in the Pacific arena. In 1950 he received a bachelor of philosophy degree under Gilbert Ryle's supervision, with an epoch-making thesis on logic...