MOVING TO FRONT FROM APRIL 13: UPDATED
Professor Gettier was responsible for what was no doubt the most famous paper in epistemology--and the most famous short paper in Anglophone philosophy--of the past sixty years, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" David Lewis, as I recall, once said that no one had ever "proved" anything in philosophy, except Gettier (readers can correct me in the comments, or supply the reference to where Lewis said this).
Gettier was of a generation when philosophers could make careers in the academy based on high regard from their colleagues without many publications (think Rogers Albritton [Harvard, then UCLA] or Thompson Clarke [Berkeley]). He taught at Wayne State during its own "golden era" as a center for analytic philosophy in the 1950s and 1960s, but spent most of his career at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (which he helped establish as a leading center for analytic philosophy), where he was emeritus. Philosopher Hilary Kornblith tells me a memorial is forthcoming, which I'll add when it appears.
UPDATE: Memorials from colleagues at U Mass/Amherst are now available here; others can add their own remembrances there as well. (Thanks to Hilary Kornblith for the pointer.)
