 Lewis was born in Oberlin, Ohio in 1941, to two academics. He was an undergraduate at Swarthmore College. During his undergraduate years, his interest in philosophy was stimulated by a year abroad in Oxford, where he heard J. L. Austin’s final series of lectures, and was tutored by Iris Murdoch. He returned to Swarthmore as a philosophy major, and never looked back. He studied at Harvard for his Ph.D., writing a dissertation under the supervision of W. V. O. Quine that became his first book, Convention. In 1966 he was hired at UCLA, where he worked until 1970, when he moved to Princeton. He remained at Princeton until his death in 2001. While at Harvard he met his wife Stephanie. They remained married throughout Lewis’s life, jointly attended numerous conferences, and co-authored three papers. Lewis visited Australia in 1971, 1975, every year from 1979 to 1999, and again shortly before his death in 2001.