Best known for his monumental work in the history of ideas, The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age (1926; revised and enlarged, 1940), John Herman Randall Jr. also did original work in metaphysics and was widely considered one of the greatest teachers of philosophy in the United States. He served with Ernest Nagel as co-editor of the prestigious Journal of Philosophy from 1937 until 1980 and was chairman of the editorial committee of the Journal of the History of Ideas from 1941 to 1955. John P. Anton, the editor of the festschrift Naturalism and Historical Understanding: Essays on the Philosophy of John Herman Randall, Jr. (1967), says that Randall never touched a subject matter without making it luminous and intelligible.

Randall was born on 14 February 1899 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to John Herman Randall, a liberal Protestant minister, and Minerva I. Ballard Randall. His father later became...