Wasfi Hijab

Hijab was born in Nablus, Palestine.^[1] He studied Mathematics at the American University of Beirut, following which he taught at a Jerusalem high school during World War 2.^[2]

After the war ended in 1945, he arrived at Trinity College, Cambridge on a scholarship, studying philosophy under Ludwig Wittgenstein, who acted as a supervisor for his thesis which he never finished.^[3] At Cambridge he served as secretary of the Moral Sciences Club, including during a famous incident where Wittgenstein allegedly threatened Karl Popper with a fireplace poker.^[4] He also invited A.J. Ayer to speak before the club.^[5] Hijab noted in the minutes of the meeting only that "the meeting was charged to an unusual degree with a spirit of controversy". During the academic year of 1945/6 he attended weekly afternoon discussions with Wittgenstein and his fellow student Elizabeth Anscombe on the topic of religion.^[6] Anscombe kept notes of these meetings which were later published as Reminiscences of Wittgenstein.^[2] At Cambridge he got to know the author Iris Murdoch, whom he befriended.^[7]

As his student from Michaelmas 1945 to Easter 1947, Wittgenstein made a deep impression on Hijab, who described him as "like an atomic bomb, a tornado".^[8] Shah was so overwhelmed by Wittgenstein that he abandoned philosophy for fifty years.

Hijab returned to the Middle East in 1948, where he taught in Syria for a few years. In 1953 he returned to the United States, obtaining a PhD in mathematics at the University of Florida in 1956. He subsequently became a faculty member at the American University of Beirut.^[2] In the final years of his life he returned to philosophy, giving two talks at the 1999 International Wittgenstein Symposium.^[9] He was working on a philosophical autobiography describing the influence of Wittgenstein on his life when he died.^[2]