I am preparing a seminar presentation on tense in conditionals, a truly daunting topic. One of my tasks has been to re-read some of the works of V.H. Dudman, who is perhaps the philosopher who has taken the grammatical contribution of tense to the semantics of conditionals most seriously. While spending some idle time on Google, I came across a useful page listing Dudman’s main contributions. The page is part of a playful website for a course apparently taught by Bob Hargrave of Balliol College, Oxford. The page says that Dudman

is a very elusive man. We do not know his whereabouts. Only that he worked in Australia for many years. We do not know his full name. No-one knows what the ‘H’ stands for. Rumour has it that the ‘V’ stands for ‘Victor’, which would be a most appropriate name for a revolutionary leader. So perhaps it is indeed just rumour.

V.H. Dudman does not use e-mail. He has no known contact address. Indeed, we know him only through his contributions to the learned journals.

Anybody know more or differently?

Update:

Enlightenment comes from Wendy Jacobs:

I found your question about V.H. Dudman and have some information for you. It is true that Victor (or Vic as he prefers to be known) Dudman does not use email, though he is most definitely still alive and well and living in Sydney, Australia.

When I was a student at Macquarie University in 1976 I studied a couple of courses in logic and language taught by Victor Dudman. Last year I was searching for him on Google and came across Bob Hargrave’s website. Bob was looking for Victor’s 1981 publication “Tense and Time in English”; I contacted both Bob and Victor and put them in touch with each other.

Victor was a lecturer in philosophy (and occasionally in linguistics) at Macquarie University for many years, being made Associate Professor in 1988. He retired from the university in about 1995, is no longer working on conditionals but is writing about the English modals.

Wendy also graciously gave me Professor Dudman’s contact info.