Michael Frede (German: [ˈfʁeːdə]; 31 May 1940 – 11 August 2007) was a prominent scholar of ancient philosophy, described by The Telegraph as "one of the most important and adventurous scholars of ancient philosophy of recent times.
[1] He joined the faculty of the philosophy department at University of California, Berkeley[2] as an assistant professor (1971) and quickly rose to the status of full professor.
[3] He returned to Europe in 1991 and took the chair in the history of philosophy at the University of Oxford.
[4] In 1997-8 he returned to Berkeley to lecture on free will as the 84th visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature; the resulting book was published posthumously.
[5] He retired from Oxford in 2005 and lived in Athens, Greece, until his death in a drowning accident in 2007.