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Birth of T.K.
Thomas Samuel Kuhn, was born in a city on the Ohio River that now known and displays its very own Cincinnati 19 century architecture. Tom was born in an affluent family whose father, Samuel served in WW1 after graduating from Harvard and MIT. His mother, Minette, came from a wealthy family in New York in which they later moved to when Tom was just a few months old. -
...but it's HARVARD!
Following in his fathers footsteps, Kuhn was accepted into Harvard in 1940 in which he considered a prestigious accomplishment. He considered studying physics however, the class proved harder than he thought after obtaining a C on his first exam. When America entered war, Tom decided to attend summer classes to speed up his graduation. Studying physics and head of the editorial board for the school paper; He shortly graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1943. -
War Work
From 1943-1949 Kuhn helped put his mind to use during the war. He began working at a research lab tasked with devising countermeasure against enemy radar. He later traveled with the Royal Air force officer to France and Germany to study captured German radar installations. Returning tp Harvard after the war, he graduated Harvard with his Doctorate in Physics 1949. -
No Tenure, No Harvard.
Kuhn decided to move on from Harvard after they denied him Tenure. Berkley was willing to offer Kuhn what Harvard could not and he gladly accepted. A year there he began a fellowship program at Stanford which is where he wrote a significant part of his influential work- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. -
The Paradigm Shift
The Paradigm Shift is what made Kuhns name. The term became widely used in all disciplines, not just science. He first described this in his book, The structure of Scientific Revolutions. This concept had been on his mind for many years. In the book he described The Kuhn cycle and how the paradigm shift works. Essentially a paradigm shift allows us to no longer believe what once was and the new way of belief on that particular subject is now the baseline. -
Death and Personal Facts
*Thomas Kuhn was Jewish but chose to be agnostic.
*Kuhns mother thought he preferred men and sent him to a therapist. Kuhn hated his therapist and later married his wife, Kathryn Muhs (1948).
*At age 59 he remarried to Jehane Burns.
*He Retired from MIT the year I was born, 1991.
*Kuhns died at age 73 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had been suffering from throat and lung cancer for two years. -
Bibliography
Thomas Kuhn." Famous Scientists. famousscientists.org. 12 Jun. 2017. Web. 4/7/2019
<www.famousscientists.org/thomas-kuhn/>
