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His Early Years of Life
Hilary Putnam was born in Chicago, Illinois, July 31, 1926. According to Yemima Ben-Menahem, "His father [Samuel Putnam] was a writer and translator, an active communist, and a columnist for the Daily Worker." His mother, Riva Putnam, was Jewish, but the family was distant. According to Jane O'Grady that Putnam "Having moved to France – Putnam’s first language was French – they returned to live in Philadelphia in 1934." -
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College
Putnam pursued mathematics and philosophy at the University of Penn. in 1948. And philosophy at Harvard and UCLA. Jane conveys that "Putnam began a Ph.D. at Harvard, under Willard Van Orman Quine. He finished it at UCLA in 1951, taught by Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap." Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap's ideals had influenced American philosophy for 15 years. He also "wrote a dissertation on the concept of probability, obtaining a Ph.D." in 1951, stated Yemima. -
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Career and 'The Analytic and Synthetic'
He was a philosophy and mathematics professor at Northwestern Uni. (1952-53), Princeton Uni. (1953-61), and Massachusetts Institute of Tech (1961-65). Erik mentioned Putnam "Also combated Quine’s views in his 1957 paper The Analytic and Synthetic, but collaborated with him to produce the Quine-Putnam indispensability thesis in mathematics". While at Princeton, he engaged himself in mathematical equations. He was also able to solve one of the 23 unsolvable problems using Diophantine equations. -
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His Other Works
With a series of wonderful papers, starting with Minds and Machines in 1960. In it he "disputed both Behaviourism and Type-Identity theory, each of which seeks, in line with scientific respectability, to reduce mental states– pain, beliefs, thoughts– to something physical." Erik written. While evolving philosophy he was involved in a protest against the Vietnam War at MIT and Harvard in 1963. Erik asserted that "In 1965 he became a member of the Progressive Labor party." -
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His Later Years
He later retired from the Progressive Labor Party in 1972, and, at the same time, he started to reject scientific realism. In 1975, he created his famous thought experiment paper called The Meaning of "Meaning." In this paper, he wrote, " a planet that precisely duplicates ours except that the clear liquid which its inhabitants drink and swim in, is not H2O but has a different chemical constitution, XYZ." according to Erik. After 35 years at Harvard, he later retired in the year 2000. -
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His Ending Days
He returned to his Jewish roots sometime in the 1990s. Nearing the end of his life, he tended to his wife and vegetables. He also held several honorary titles for his work. Erik disclosed that " In 2011 he was awarded the Rolf Schock prize in logic and philosophy by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and he continued to publish until 2014." Sadly on March 13, 2016, he died of mesothelioma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLrVxNlUxBo