Robert Merrihew Adams

Robert Merrihew Adams (Bob Adams) (born September 8, 1937) is an American analytic philosopher of metaphysics, religion and morality.

Adams taught for many years at UCLA before moving to Yale University in the early 1990s as the Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics. As chairman, he revived the Philosophy Department after its near-collapse in personal and scholarly conflicts between analytical and Continental philosophers. Adams retired from Yale in 2004 and taught part time at University of Oxford in England, where he was a fellow of Mansfield College. His wife, Marilyn McCord Adams, was Regius Professor of Divinity at Christ Church, Oxford. In 2009 he became a Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As a historical scholar, he has published on the work of the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and is a respected Leibniz scholar. His work in the philosophy of religion includes influential essays on the problem of evil and divine command theories of ethics. He is a past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers. In 1999, he delivered the Gifford Lectures, "God and Being". He is a member of the British Academy. Adams was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991.

His wife, Marilyn McCord Adams, is also a philosopher, working on medieval philosophy and the philosophy of religion.