  Prior gained his M.A. in philosophy in 1937. His thesis, criticizing various philosophical approaches to logic, involved him in reading ‘a lot about Wittgenstein &amp; certain kindred writers’, including Karl Popper. But the thesis was awarded only a second by the external examiner. Fortunately, Findlay knew a budding logician when he saw one, and secured Prior a one-year assistant lectureship at Otago. During the 1937 academic year Prior gave courses on logic, ethics, and probability theory. Findlay pressed him to contribute to the Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, and Prior’s ‘The Nation and the Individual’ (influenced by John Wisdom) became his first published paper in philosophy, in December 1937. (Prior’s earlier theological writings are discussed in Hasle (1999) and (2012), Grimshaw (2002), and Jakobsen (2012) and (2016).) Prior mentioned ‘The Nation and the Individual’ and its origins in a 1937 letter: