Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece. He was also a mathematician student of Socrates writer of philosophical dialogues and founder of the Academy in Athens the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor Socrates and his most-famous student Aristotle Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science. Alfred North Whitehead once noted "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
