Virgil Aldrich was born in India on September 13, 1903. He received his B.A. degree from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1925, and pursued graduate studies at Oxford, the Sorbonne, and finally the University of California at Berkeley, where he received the Ph.D. in 1931. He has taught at Rice University, Columbia University, Kenyon College, the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), and since 1972, at the University of Utah. He has also held visiting and summer session appointments at Harvard, Brown, the University of Michigan, and the University of Texas. He is Past President of the American Philosophical Association (Western Division), Past President of the American Society for Aesthetics, and Past Director of the Kyoto American Studies Institute.