The Cambridge University academic Professor Peter Lipton was a leading philosopher of science, a supremely efficient head of department and an extraordinarily gifted teacher, renowned above all for his ability to reach out and bring philosophy to a wider audience.

Lipton revered the 18th-century thinker David Hume, who got him “hooked” on philosophy, but made his mark with original research in complex areas such as explanation, inference, testing, theory change, laws of nature, scientific realism and the philosophy of mind. His 1991 book on patterns of reasoning, Inference to the Best Explanation (second edition 2004) defended a model of non-

demonstrative inference, conducive to the view that our best scientific theories are sometimes true. Highly original and pellucid, it is already regarded as a classic.

Lipton's undergraduate lectures were models of clarity, insight and wit. Attendance rates frequently topped 100 per cent — philosophy students would bring their friends along — and on at least one occasion Lipton was showered with flowers. He was also in great demand as a PhD supervisor, typically working with six to ten graduate students on top of his other commitments. His ability charitably to “summarise” the inchoate and/or confused thoughts of his interlocutors was legendary: Lipton invariably said what you wished you had meant.

Alongside his demanding university duties, Lipton took part in chats on the website AskPhilosophers.org and spoke (dozens of times each year) at schools, summer schools and colleges. He also exerted pressure on Cambridge to make the university more accessible to students from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Peter Lipton was born in 1954. His parents Lini and Louis Lipton were both Jewish, and had fled as adolescents from Nazi Germany to New York, where they brought Peter up. As such, he grew up with a strong Jewish identity and sense of social justice.

He studied physics and philosophy at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, and then came to the UK to undertake a DPhil at Oxford. When he graduated in 1985, he started his academic career with two successive lecturing posts in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

In 1991 he came back to the UK, this time heading for Cambridge, where he became assistant lecturer at the university's Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

Lipton rose through the ranks with unusual speed. Three years after arriving he was appointed full lecturer, and two years after that he became head of department. He held this position until his death, as well as that of departmental chair, bestowed on him in 1997. Lipton turned out to be an administrator of genius, bringing fully to bear the intellectual and personal qualities that so distinguished his research and teaching.

Not surprisingly, the department flourished under his leadership. Visitors and new arrivals would remark on the “happy atmosphere in HPS”; most soon learnt to take it for granted.

Ever pushing to make philosophy relevant to life, Lipton became increasingly interested of recent years in bioethics, the ethics of biological science and medicine. He chaired a Nuffield Council working party on ethical issues of pharmacogenetics, the merger of pharmacology and genetics into a field that pertains to the hereditary responses to drugs. He produced the 2003 report Pharmacogenetics: Ethical Issues, and went on to serve as a full member of the council.

Another area that came to fascinate him was the intersection of philosophy and religion. Lipton described himself as a “religious atheist” and was a practising Reform Jew. Every Yom Kippur for the past 14 years, and many Sabbaths, he went from lecturer to preacher, giving the sermon at the Cambridge Beth Shalom congregation, where he was co-chair and — more challengingly — occasional convener of the children's service. In his sermons, he would bring together seemingly disparate topics of his research, the day's Torah reading and current affairs.

For Lipton, family life was integrally linked with his philosophical and religious positions. A father of two sons and husband of the King's College London academic Diana Lipton, he cited his devotion to his family as philosophical evidence of the ability of man to act outside self-interest. And he placed such value on creating an intellectual environment at home that he refused to have a television, which he regarded as an unhelpful distraction.

Lipton's total commitment to all he did was untainted by any hint of self-importance or pomposity. Many will remember him most for his generosity, lightness of touch and constant humour.

“If you told a joke in the forest, and no one was there to hear it, would it be funny?”, asked a recent poster on AskPhilosophers.org. “Nice question,” began Lipton's two-paragraph response, “I guess it depends on how good the joke is.”

Lipton was a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

He collapsed and died after a game of squash.

He is survived by his wife and two sons.

Professor Peter Lipton, philosopher of science, was born on October 9, 1954. He died on November 25, 2007, aged 53