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Birth/Death
Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science.
Imre Lakatos was into a Jewish family. His mother and grandmother died at the Auschwitz concentration camp in the German Nazi invasion during World War II. In order to avoid the Nazi discrimination, he changed his surname to ‘Molnar’ and later, took upon ‘Lakatos’ (Locksmith) as his last name, inspired by Hungarian general Geza Lakatos, and became Imre Lakatos. -
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Education Achievement
He completed his education from the University of Debrecen in 1944, graduating in mathematics, physics and philosophy. He received his PhD from Debrecen University 1948. He obtained a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Cambridge in 1961. He landed himself in political trouble in 1950 and imprisoned for three years. He resumed his studies in 1953 and took up mathematical research, wherein he started translating mathematics books into Hungarian. -
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Publish/Major Works
He was hired at the London School of Economics (LSE) as an assistant lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, where he wrote extensively on the philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics.
While studying at Cambridge, he compiled a doctoral thesis ‘Essays in the Logic of Mathematical Discovery’, which was published in four parts as ‘Proofs and Refutations’ in ‘The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science’. -
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Legacy
A number of his influential papers on the philosophy of science were published in two books, ‘Lakatos 1978s’ and ‘Lakatos 1978b’, by his two former students - Gregory Currie and John Worrall. In 1978, his papers, previously published in several scholarly journals, were compiled and released as ‘Philosophical Papers’. The London School of Economics introduced the Lakatos Award in 1986, which is given to candidates making exceptional contributions to the philosophy of science.