[1] A Harvard graduate who taught at his alma mater for most of his career (where he retired as Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy Emeritus), he published little but was a teacher and a critic of the work of his colleagues (Floyd & Shieh 2001).

The Harvard Crimson described him as "A mathematical logician by training, his writings set new standards of clarity for the historical study of 20th-century philosophy.

His lectures at Harvard and later at Boston University, where he taught from 1991 until his death, were famous for their wit, bravado, and intellectual excitement, attracting students and faculty alike and shaping several generations of philosophers.

[2] Dreben also had a significant influence on many students and junior faculty at Harvard, including Warren Goldfarb, James F. Conant, Michael Friedman, and others.

In his later years, Dreben was a guest lecturer in Scandinavia, Israel, and Europe, giving seminars on the nature and significance of 20th-century philosophy.

In particular, in Herbrand's proof, a crucial lemma was fatally flawed, but Dreben found another way of proving the essential conclusions of the thesis.

Dreben took from Wittgenstein the lesson that philosophers always went wrong when they tried to provide general accounts of reality, epistemology, or metaphysics.