-
Born on September 26th, 1891
Hans Reichenbach was born in Hamburg, Germany on September 26th, 1891.
Here is a video by Alan Richardson, explaining the signal achievements of Hans Reichenbach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5c7-UNZreQ -
Education
Hans Reichenbach received his philosophy degree at the University of Erlangen. -
Theory of Probability
Supervised by Paul Hensel and Emmy Noether, Hans published his dissertation on the Theory of Probability. -
Period: to
World War I
Hans Reichenbach served in World War I on the Russian front as a German army radio troop. Due to illness, Hans was discharged from the army and the next couple of years attending Albert Einstein's lectures on his theory of relativity in Berlin. In 1920, Hans published his first book on the philosophy and implications of Einstein's theory of relativity called, The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge, which critiqued the Kantian ideal of a synthetic a priori. -
Technische Hochschule
In 1926, Hans Reichenbach became the assistant professor of the physics department at Berlin University with the encouragement of Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and Max von Laue. -
Berlin Circle
In 1928, Hans also founded the Berlin Circle which was a group that maintained logical empiricist ideas about philosophy. -
Period: to
Emigration to Turkey
In 1933, Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany, Hans emigrated to Turkey, where he led the Department of Philosophy at the University of Istanbul. He introduced interdisciplinary teachings and courses on scientific areas of study, and in 1935, he published The Theory of Probability. -
United States
In 1938, Hans was able to relocate to the United States with the help of Charles Morris and took up a professorship at the University of California in Los Angeles. OSU - School of History, Philosophy, and Religion. (2015, January 29). “Signal Achievements” - the story of Hans Reichenbach [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5c7-UNZreQ -
Reichenbach's Later Work
His work on philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics was published in 1944, followed by Elements of Symbolic Logic and The Rise of Scientific Philosophy. Hilary Putnam, one of Hans's more prominent students, helped establish UCLA as a leading philosophy department in the U.S. in the post-war period. -
Hans Reichenbach's Death
Hans died on April 9, 1953, in Los Angeles, while working on problems in areas of philosophy of time and on the nature of scientific laws. This work resulted in two books published after his death which included The Direction of Time and Nomological Statements and Admissible Operations. Hans Reichenbach - New World Encyclopedia. (2000). New World Encyclopedia. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Hans_Reichenbach
