Edgar Brightman was a teacher and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr. as King pursued his PhD at Boston University in the early 1950s. (Following Brightman's death, Lotan Harold DeWolf, who had himself received his 1935 PhD in philosophy studying under Brightman, became King's dissertation adviser and another significant influence on King's theological and philosophical thinking.) Brightman's influence is reflected in King's philosophy of Nonviolence, most markedly in the sixth and most fundamental principle of King's philosophy of Nonviolence, "The arc of the Universe is long, but it bends toward justice."