Passing of Dr. Frederic Maxwell Schroeder

The death of Frederic Maxwell Schroeder at the age of eighty-five on 22 December last will have saddened his many friends and colleagues in the community of Canadian students of Greek philosophy.  A native of Ontario, he took both his degrees at Toronto, and entered on a life-long study of Plotinus with a dissertation written under John Rist’s supervision.  He enriched his education with a year in Germany, and, being an excellent linguist, maintained contacts there and in France with scholars engaged with Neoplatonism.  In Canada, he had a close association with Dalhousie’s journal Dionysius, where some of his most important articles appeared.  He spent his career at Queen’s University, and for many years he and Margaret Reesor were a complementary and formidable pair in the area of post-Aristotelian ancient philosophy.   His book on Plotinus, Form and Transformation (1992), was the product of long reflection on that philosopher.  In person, Fred was invariably good company, with his gentle manner and almost old-world courtesy, but he had strongly held opinions about his field of study, which he nonetheless conveyed with good humour and grace.  Anyone fortunate enough to meet him will remember him fondly.

Submitted by Robert B. Todd

22 July 2023