Peter Albert David Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor Emeritus of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, is a leading figure in philosophy. Born July 6, 1946, in Melbourne, Australia, he attended Preshil School and Scotch College, earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of Melbourne in 1967, master’s degree in 1969, and B.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1971 under R. M. Hare. After serving as Radcliffe Lecturer at Oxford, he taught at New York University and La Trobe University before joining Monash University’s Department of Philosophy in 1977 as professor, later chairing the department, serving as associate dean of arts, director of the Centre for Human Bioethics, and codirector of the Institute for Ethics and Public Policy. Singer joined Princeton in 1999, shifting to part-time in 2005 to hold the Laureate Professorship at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (2005-2012) and School of Historical and Philosophical Studies (2013-2019), and directing Princeton’s Ira W. DeCamp Bioethics Seminars. He transferred to emeritus status on July 1, 2024.

Singer’s research specializations include applied ethics, utilitarianism (including moral realism and hedonistic utilitarianism), ethics influencing daily decisions, the treatment of animals (including vegetarianism/veganism and animal experimentation), global poverty alleviation, effective altruism, bioethics, freedom of expression, and the ideas of Henry Sidgwick and Karl Marx. Major publications encompass Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (HarperCollins, 1975), “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (1972, republished as a book in 2015), The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (Random House, 2009), and The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (Yale University Press, 2015), with many translated into multiple languages and appeared in multiple editions. Awards include the 2021 Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture (which he donated entirely, $1 million), Companion of the Order of Australia (2012), and Princeton’s Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.

Professional Email: psinger@princeton.edu