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Birth
Thomas Kuhn was born July 18, 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was born into an affluent family and had a younger brother, Roger. His father was a world war 1 veteran and an industrial engineer that had attended Harvard and MIT. His mother was from a wealthy family. She was a writer and freelance editor. -
Harvard University
In 1940, Thomas Kuhn finally felt at home when he moved to attend Harvard University. However, he struggled with physics to begin with, but eventually learned how to master it. He graduated Summa cum laude after deciding to speed up his degree when American entered world war 2. -
World War II
In the summer of 1943, Thomas joined the Radio Research Laboratory. He was tasked with helping to develop countermeasures to enemy radar. He was taken to captured Nazi radar camps to study them and develop effective countermeasures against them. After the war, he returned to Harvard to finish his master's in physics. -
The Paradigm Shift
His most notable contribution to science was the idea of the paradigm shift. Basically, this was a way to explain how culture and new discoveries can cause a shift in the entire way of thinking for scientists. He mentioned this in a book published in 1962, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".
