Concept

Professor

Overview

Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a 'person who professes'. Professors are usually experts in their field and teachers of the highest rank.

In most systems of academic ranks, "professor" as an unqualified title refers only to the most senior academic position, sometimes informally known as "full professor". In some countries and institutions, the word professor is also used in titles of lower ranks such as associate professor and assistant professor; this is particularly the case in the United States, where the unqualified word is also used colloquially to refer to associate and assistant professors as well, and often to instructors or lecturers.

Professors often conduct original research and commonly teach undergraduate, postgraduate, or professional courses in their fields of expertise. In universities with graduate schools, professors may mentor and supervise graduate students conducting research for a thesis or dissertation. In many universities, full professors take on senior managerial roles such as leading departments, research teams and institutes, and filling roles such as president, principal or vice-chancellor. The role of professor may be more public-facing than that of more junior staff, and professors are expected to be national or international leaders in their field of expertise.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Professor is discussed.

I here mention, by the way, another evil by which students are much embarrassed. Professors, as well as other men in office, cannot all be of the same age: but when the younger ones teach, in fact, only that they may learn, and moreover, if they have talent, anticipate their age, they acquire their own cultivation altogether at the cost of their hearers; since these are not instructed in what they really need, but…
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Autobiography
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
It is clear that the professor is valued too highly, with evil consequences for the future genius, for whom he has no compassion, merely a cold, contemptuous criticism, a shrug of the shoulders, as if at something strange and perverted for which he has neither time nor inclination. And so he too knows nothing of the aim of culture.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thoughts Out of Season, Part II
states what it is; names the idea
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Suppose we are in a class; the professor dictates: the circle is the locus of points of the plane equidistant from an interior point called the center. The good scholar writes this phrase in his note-book; the bad scholar draws faces; but neither understands; then the professor takes the chalk and draws a circle on the board. "Ah!" think the scholars, "why did he not say at once: a circle is a ring, we should have…
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
In Geneva, on the contrary, in the protestant cantons of Switzerland, in the protestant countries of Germany, in Holland, in Scotland, in Sweden, and Denmark, the most eminent men of letters whom those countries have produced, have, not all indeed, but the far greater part of them, been professors in universities. In those countries, the universities are continually draining the church of all its most eminent men of…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
names the idea; opens on it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Thus then arises a temporary and practical distinction that tends to be taken as opposition between qualities and relations. As spatial and temporal characteristics possess their chief practical value in the connection of things, so they, like Professor Cohen's neighbor-character, are ordinarily assumed abstractly as mere relations, while shapes, colors, etc., and Professor Cohen's "modesty, tallness, cheerfulness,"…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
states what it is; names the idea
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Professor

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Professor

Related ideas

Place in the tradition