Plato was the most famous of the Greek philosophers, aside from his teacher Socrates. He founded the Academy in Athens, written dialogue, political philosophy, epistemology, the concept of religion, and many other crucial elements of thought. All were attributed to Plato, which laid the framework for Western philosophy as we know it. He was also credited for famed protg Aristotle, whose contributions to philosophy and thought are often deemed of equal or greater importance. Simon Blackburn is a British American philosopher. He has been a professor at University of Cambridge and currently teaches at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a former editor of the journal The Mind and is the author of Plato's Republic: A Biography.