His four years of postdoctoral study in Heidelberg, Germany, with Hans-Georg Gadamer arescattered over four decades, from 1965 to 1996 and include two Fulbright Grants in the nineties. These have been the foundation for the dozens of articles and translations gathered together here. A high-point in his career was participating in a seminar with Martin Heidegger in 1965 followed by a three-hour dinner conversing with him about his works and life after the war.

In 1999 Palmer retired to devote himself to translating and writing about the works and hermeneutical philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. The two books are Gadamer in Conversation: Reflections and Commentary which contains three conversations with Carston Dutt, plus three other conversations with Glenn Most, Alfons Grieder, and Dörte von Westernhagen, edited and translated by Richard E. Palmer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 174pp., and A Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings, edited by Richard E. Palmer (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 479pp.