English scholar who joined the Franciscan order and studied and lectured at Oxford. He maintained that theology was faith combined with the performance of individual rituals and was not amenable to reason. He believed abstractions to be inherently untrue. His statement "entities must not needlessly be multiplied" came to be interpreted to mean that, of two theories, the simpler one is more nearly valid and is now known as "Ockham's razor ."

Additional biographies: MacTutor (St. Andrews)