Dr. Anscombe was invited to become the chair's first occupant and give the inaugural lecture for the chair on October 26th, 1995. Her lecture, titled "Die Wahrheit Thun" (To Do the Truth), examined the idea of "doing the truth," which has its earliest known expression in the 1st Epistle of St. John (I, VI).
Dr. Anscombe was Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Cambridge University; an Honorary Fellow of St. Hugh's College, Oxford; a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford; an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a member of the British Academy.
She taught at Somerville College, Oxford; the University of Michigan; the University of Chicago; the University of Minnesota; the University of Pennsylvania; and Johns Hopkins University.
Among the many honors and awards she has received are the Ehrenkreuz Pro Litteris et Artibus (Austria, 1978), the Forschungspries, Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (1983), and an Honorary Doctorate from Notre Dame University (1986). During academic year 1987-88, she was President of The Aristotelian Society.
Professor Anscombe has given endowed lectures at Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Harvard, Princeton, Minnesota, Johns Hopkins, Brown, UCLA, Columbia, Berkeley and other universities.
Her translations of the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein are widely viewed as important contributions to the study of his thought. (In addition to carrying out the translation of Philosophical Investigations, the only book by Wittgenstein published with his permission. As Wittgenstein's literary executor, she translated and co-edited his posthumous works.) Her original contributions to philosophy include the celebrated book Intention (1957) which launched the branch of philosophy known as "action theory," An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (1959), Three Philosophers (with P.T. Geach, 1961), and a three volume edition of her Collected Papers (Blackwell, 1981) a number of which (e.g., "The Intentionality of Sensation," "On Brute Facts," "Mr. Truman's Degree," "What's Wrong With Modern Moral Philosophy?," "The First Person," and "The Source of the Authority of the State") are widely regarded as classics of twentieth century philosophy. Her more recent contributions, apart from forthcoming Inaugural Lecture in Liechtenstein, include her penetrating chapter on "Murder and the Morality of Euthanasia," in Euthanasia, Clinical Practice, and the Law, (Luke Gormally, ed.) Linacre Centre, 1994.
Her death in January of 2001 left bereft not only the world of philosophy, but also the world at large.