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Birth
Thomas S. Kuhn was born on July 18th, 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was born into a prosperous family. His father Samuel Louis Kuhn was a very educated man and had degrees from both Harvard and MIT. His mother was an author and an editor. -
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Thomas Kuhn - July 18, 1922 - June 17, 1996
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Education
Kuhn attended a private progressive school in Manhattan from Kindergarten through 5th grade. The school focused on free thinking rather than general education. Kuhn could not read until he was seven years old. After the family moved he attended another private progressive school, and learned to love math. 10th through graduation he attended two separate boarding schools in Pennsylvania and Conneticut. -
Harvard
In 1940 Kuhn started studying Physics at Harvard. After earning a C in his first exam he felt mediocre but worked his way up to an A. He graduated with a BS in Physics summa cum laude, in 1943. -
War
During the war he worked for the Radio Research Laboratory’s theoretical group to devise countermeasures against enemy radar. He traveled with the Royal Air Force to the UK and Germany. -
PhD
After the war he went back to Harvard and earned a Masters and Doctorate in Physics. -
History of Science
After an invitation to teach History of Science in 1947, inspired by Aristotle, he became fascinated by the mechanism of scientific progress. After completing a fellowship and working as an instructor, he was promoted to assistant professor in 1949 at Harvard. -
Marriage 1
He married his first wife Kathryn Muhs. They had three children together and divorced in 1978. -
Berkeley
In 1956 he was offered an assistant professor position at Berkeley & the Center for Advanced Study. He accepted the offer because Harvard had not given him tenure. He received tenure at Berkeley in 1958 and was promoted to full professor of the History of Science at Berkeley in 1961. He was not happy about his decision because he wanted to be a professor of Philosophy. -
The Paradigm Shift
Using Aristotle as his inspiration of his research. He realized that Aristotle's ideas about motion were irrational because of the methods used back then had greatly differed from today's methods. He released his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. -
Princeton and MIT
In 1964, he became the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science, followed by becoming Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT in 1979 -
Marriage 2
In 1981, he married his second wife Jehane Barton Burns. They stayed married until his death. -
Death
Kuhn died at the age of 73 from throat and lung cancer.
His theory on paradigm shift is well known among scientist, but Kuhn himself, is not nearly known as well as, for example, his inspiration Aristotle. Nonetheless, his work has surpassed him and has helped us understand science better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6TfDHYFPiE
