George Berkeley

George Berkeley (1685–1753) was an Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he published his Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous before he was thirty, setting out the immaterialism for which he is known: that to be is to be perceived and that matter apart from mind is an empty notion. He spent three years in Rhode Island planning a college for Bermuda that never opened, became Bishop of Cloyne in 1734 and wrote Siris on tar-water. The city of Berkeley, California, is named after him.