Alfred Edward Taylor was born on 22 December 1869. He was educated at Kingswood School, Bath, and he studied at New College, Oxford. He was a Fellow of Merton College, 1891-1898. He was the brother of the Rev. Ernest Wesley Taylor who studied at Oxford and at Cuddesdon Theological College (Ripon College, Cuddesdon). From 1896, Alfred Edward Taylor was an assistant lecturer in Greek at Owens College, Manchester, and in 1903 he became Professor of Philosophy at McGill University in Montreal. In 1908, Taylor returned to Britain as Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews University, and in 1924 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University. He became Professor Emeritus in 1941. Taylor was an international authority on Plato and he was a strong Anglo-Catholic. His publications includeThe problem of conduct(1901,Plato and Thomas Hobbes in philosophies ancient and modern(1908),St. Thomas Aquinas as a philosopher(1924),The faith of a moralist(1930), andSocrates(1933). Professor Alfred Edward Taylor died on 31 October 1945.

The Rev. Ernest Wesley Taylor had died at Barble Bay, New Guinea on 23 June 1903.