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Hilary Putnam was born on 31 July 1926 to Samuel and Riva Putnam. Both parents were active communists.
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Putnam obtained his Ph.D. in 1951 from UCLA. He wrote his dissertation on the concept of probability.
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He taught philosophy at multiple colleges. He began at Northwestern University, then Princeton, and MIT until 1976.
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In 1975, Putnam wrote his famous paper "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" which discusses meanings as being anchored in external reality.
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In 1975 Putnam wrote "Philosophy and Our Mental Life". Here he talks about functionalism and tries to show the functional role of mental states compared to other states and behaviors.
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in 1976 he joined the philosophy department at Harvard.
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Putnam took a thought experiment that was meant to raise skepticism and concluded that it was a self-defeating and paradoxical hypothesis.
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He retired as Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard in 2000.
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“Philosophy of Mind.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/biography/Hilary-Putnam/Philosophy-of-mind.