User:Tom Morris/Philosophy in Australia

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History
The first person given an academic position to teach philosophy in Australia was Barzillai Quaife, a minister for the Congregationalist church, who was appointed in 1850 to be the professor of Mental Philosophy and Divinity at John Dunmore Lang's Australian College (which closed only two years later).

In 1850, the University of Sydney was founded and Rev John Woolley, an Oxford-trained classicist and priest, became its first Principal and taught logic as part of his professorship in classics. Woolley died in 1867 and was succeeded by another Oxford classics scholar, Rev Charles Badham. It took until 1888 for the University of Sydney to set up a philosophy department; in 1890, a named philosophy was created at the university for philosophy: the Challis Chair for Mental and Moral Philosophy. Its first occupier was Francis Anderson, a Scot with a degree from the University of Glasgow, who had moved to Australia in 1886.

It did not take so long for the University of Melbourne to create a professorship for philosophy. In 1881, the university decided to create a lectureship covering logic and a chair in philosophy. This latter position was given to Henry Laurie.