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Birth
Thomas Kuhn was born on July 18th, 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio. -
Bachelors of Science in Physics
He attended Harvard, where he was unsure if physics was right for him just because he received a grade lower than he wanted. After consulting with a professor he then decided to keep practicing and then later received an A on his next exam. Following all that he then graduated from Harvard with a Bachelors of Science summa cum laude. -
War Work
The summer of 1943 he decided to join a theoretical group based at Harvard. His group, known as Radio Research Laboratory, was assigned to devise countermeasures against enemy radar. -
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History of Science
At this point he began a teaching career teaching History of Science to undergraduates at Harvard. During this time he realized that he could not understand Aristotle's ideas due to his modern education of physics clouding his mind. Instead of seeing it from Aristotle's point of view, he was seeing it from the more modern thoughts of Newton. When Kuhn began to look at it from all accounts, things became more clear to him. -
Doctorate in The History of Science
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Assistant professor
From 1956 to 1964 after accepting an assistant professor position of philosophy and history at the University of California at Berkeley after not being offered tenure at Harvard. -
Publishment
In 1957 he published the book " The Copernican Revolution. His take and scrutinization of Nicholas Copernicus' book, De revolutionibus, with its bold claim that the earth orbits the sun. He claimed this idea was still preferred due to the aesthetic rather than scientific reasons. The bases of the book came from a course he was giving students. -
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
During his one-year fellowship at Standford University's Center for Advanced Study, Kuhn's wrote his most influential work. In this work he discussed the term "paradigm shift" which is his way of describing how societal changes shift how scientific theories are viewed. His idea says that science goes thought a cycle of normal science where scientists are gathering facts and going about their business. During this time he published " The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" -
Philosophy of Science
From 1964 to 1979 he had taught Philosophy of Science at Princeton University -
Death
Thomas Kuhn on June 17, 1996 in Cambridge, Massachusetts
