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Pre-war and After
Lakatos was born Lipsitez in Hungary and changed his name due to anti-semtisim. He was a communist and a leftist. He started illegal study groups and was a sort of rebellious bad-boy logicist. -
Origins and Early Works
After WW2 he was jailed by the Stalinists Regime and ended up, afterwards, in England where he worked with Popper. His work with Popper reflects in his work, but they should be considered different entities. He also began to fight against formalism in mathematics. -
Forming Ideas
Lakatos viewed Kuhn's work as destructive to the sciences and sought to undo the damage that he caused in Lakatos's mind. He argies that falsifiabilty plays a role in how scientific theories should be formed. He began to form the backbone of what he considered how things should be done.This is when he began to explore the idea of the hard core became more worked into his logic. The sequence of theories that was to be investigated was to be labeled a research program. -
First Publicaitons
It was not until 1963 that he would produce his first work outlining his ideas. This was called Proofs and Refutations. His work was very different and questioned a lot of long-held practices in the sciences. This period would mark his career and form his magnum opus which carried him through the end of his life. He would go on to publish more and more works before finally passing in 1974 -
Un-timely Death
Lakatos dies in 1974 of a sudden heart attack. He died at 51 and at a high time in his career. His ideas were gaining traction. Yet, he died as an average man, no pomp and circumstance but just as a non stately researcher. It was until later that his ideas resonated with the scientific community more and more.