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Birth
Pierre Durham was born in Paris, France on June 10, 1861. He was the eldest of four children to his father Pierre-Joseph Duhem and Alexandrine Fabre. he lived in a modest area growing up on Rue des Jeûneurs, near the Grands Boulevards, just South of Montmartre. His parents had passed away at a young age which had caused him to have to stop his studies and provide for his family. He worked in the textile industry as a sales representative but never forget his love of learning. -
Duhem's first Published Paper
Dunhem published his first paper which was on electrochemical cells. Even before receiving his license in mathematics, Duhem submitted his doctoral thesis in 1884. Suddenly his brilliant career shuddered to a halt. The thesis was on the thermodynamic potential in physics and chemistry and in it, he defined the criterion for chemical reactions in terms of free energy. In this, he was replacing the incorrect criterion which Marcellin Berthelot had put forward twenty years earlier. -
Duhem's Thesis was Rejected
Duhem knew he was right and boldly published the rejected thesis in 1886 when Berthelot became French Minister of Education. Unfortunately, the enmity between Berthelot and Duhem was not dissipated until after 1900. Meanwhile, Duhem worked on a second thesis, this time wisely choosing a mathematical work on magnetism, which was finally accepted in 1888, while he was already teaching at Likke on hydrodynamics, elasticity, and acoustics, publishing these lectures in 1891. -
Became a member of his Academy
Duhem taught at Lille (1887-1893), Rennes (1893-1894) and Bordeaux (1894-1916). He spurned an offer of a professorship in the history of sciences at the College de France shortly before his death, on the grounds that he was a physicist and would not enter Paris by the back door of history. In 1900 he was elected to corresponding membership in the Academy of Sciences, in 1913 he was elected one of the first six nonresident members of the Academy. -
Death of a great Philosopher
Duhem died in September of 1916 at fifty-five of a heart attack brought on by a walking expedition during vacation days at Cabrespine. -
Youtube Video
Pierre Durham Scientist, Historian and Philosopher I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51VnhozqUNg -
Citations
Beaney, Michael. "Chronology of Analytic Philosophy and It's Historiography." Oxford Handbooks, Oxford University Press, June 17, 2017. Kuzemsky, A.L. "Biography of Pierre Duhem(1861-1916)." Biography of Francis. Collins, 2006, theor.jinr.ru/~kuzemsky/pdubio.html. Sack, Harald. "Pierre Duhem and the Role of Theory in Science." SciHi Blog, 11 June 2018.