Frederick Charles Copleston SJ CBE FBA (10 April 1907 – 3 February 1994) was an English Jesuit Catholic priest, philosopher, and historian of philosophy, best known for his influential multi-volume A History of Philosophy (1946–75). Copleston achieved a degree of popularity in the media for debating the existence of God with Bertrand Russell in a celebrated 1948 BBC broadcast; the following year he debated logical positivism and the meaningfulness of religious language with his friend the analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer.