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Biography of Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Kuhn is a philosopher of science who has changed the perception and understanding of the world of science.

Childhood and youth

Thomas Coon was born to Minette Scrook-kun and Samuel L. Kuhn in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied at the Hessian Hills School in New York, where students were encouraged to think independently.
Interest in physics at Kuhn opened at the school “The Taft School” in Watertown, which he graduated in 1940.

In 1943, Thomas Kuhn graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in physics. In 1946 he received a master’s degree in natural sciences, and in 1949 a Ph. D. For three years he was a junior research fellow at Harvard, and these years had a strong impact on his future, because it was then that Kun realized that he would prefer physics and the philosophy of science to physics.

Career

Kuhn’s first job was the Harvard Radio Research Laboratory at the US Bureau of Research and

Development, where he worked in a team engaged in radar.

After graduation from 1948 to 1956, he taught the history of science, at the personal request of the president of the university, James Conant.

In 1957, in his book The Copernican Revolution, he refuted the claims of many outstanding scientists stating that the Earth is in the center of the solar system.

In 1961, he was appointed teacher of the subject “History of Science” at the University of California, where he was listed immediately in two faculties – the Faculty of Philosophy and the Department of History.

In 1962 he published his important work “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” which was first published in a book from the series “Fundamentals of Unity of Science.” In his work, he argued that competing paradigms are often incommensurable.

He also proposed the notion of “paradigm shift,” and stated that the branches of science experience periodic changes, and do not develop linearly and constantly.

In 1964 he became professor of philosophy and history of

science of Moses Taylor Pine at Princeton University.

In 1977, he published the book “Essential Tension,” which was a collection of his essays on philosophy and the history of science.

From 1979 to 1991 he was Professor of Philosophy Lawrence S. Rockefeller at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1988, his second historical monograph on the early history of quantum mechanics entitled “Blackbody theory and quantum continuity” was published.

In 1996, the year of his death, he worked on the second philosophical monograph, which dealt with the “evolutionary understanding of scientific change” and the “concept of acquisition in the developmental psychology.”

Basic work

In the best-selling book The Copernican Revolution, published in 1957, Kuhn analyzes the Scientific Revolution of the 16th century and the Ptolemaic understanding of the solar system.

Published in 1962, the book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” in which Kuhn introduced the notion of “paradigm shift,” is considered one of the most influential and quoted scientific books. The London magazine “The Times Literary Supplement” added the book to the list of “Most influential books after World War II”. By the mid-1990s, the book had been bought more than one million times; it was translated into 16 languages.

Awards and achievements

Thomas Kuhn was one of the fellows of the Harvard Fellowship.

In 1954 he received a prestigious Guggenheim scholarship.

In 1982, the Society of Historians of Science awarded him the George Sarton Medal.

Personal life and heritage

The first time Thomas Kun married Catherine Mousse, and the couple had three children. The second time, Thomas Kun married Gian Barton Burns.

In 1994, Thomas Koon was diagnosed with cancer, from which he subsequently died.

In his honor, the American Chemical Society presents the award “The Change of the Thomas Coon Paradigm” to those who offer interesting and contradictory to the basic scientific theories views.