Samuel Todes was an American philosopher who made notable contributions to existentialism, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind. He was Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University at the time of his death in 1994. His Harvard University doctoral dissertation, The Human Body as Material Subject of the World, written in 1963, was published in 2001 as Body and World (MIT Press).
According to philosopher Piotr Hoffman, "Had [Todes' dissertation] been published at the time it was written, it would have been recognized as one of the most valuable contributions to philosophy in the postwar period and as the most significant contribution to the field of existential phenomenology since the work of Merleau-Ponty."[1]
Body and World also makes a notable contribution to contemporary interdisciplinary research in the field of embodied cognitive science.