Clyde Laurence (“Larry”) Hardin, 90, of Syracuse, NY, died on April 1, 2023, in the Iroquois Nursing Home after a long illness.

Larry was born in in Des Moines, Iowa, on August 27, 1932, spending most of his childhood in Birmingham, AL, and Greenwich, CT. He received a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University in 1953, an M.A. from the University of Illinois in 1954 and a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1958.

A year later, he joined the faculty of Syracuse University, where he taught for 36 years in the Department of Philosophy and also served for one year as acting chair of the department, seven years as director of the Renée Crown University Honors Program, and five years as director of graduate studies in philosophy. In 1995 he retired as Professor Emeritus.

Professor Hardin taught philosophy of science to generations of students and was one of the world’s leading experts on the philosophical problems associated with color perception. Well into retirement he was much in demand worldwide as a lecturer on these topics. He wrote an award-winning book, Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow; produced an edited volume, Color Categories in Thought and Language; and published some 60 articles and book chapters. He received several grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A former student who would become his colleague said, “He was generous of soul and full of good humor; more specifically, he was unrelentingly addicted to puns.” Another colleague called him “an eloquent champion of the liberal arts.”