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The Library of Living Philosophers

Hilary Putnam

One of the most distinguished living philosophers, Hilary Putnam has exerted a powerful impact on 20th century Anglo-American philosophy. Born in Chicago in 1926, Putnam’s early training was in mathematics and philosophy. He did postgraduate work in philosophy at UCLA under the supervision of Hans Reichenbach, gaining a doctorate in 1951. Putnam then taught at Northwestern, Princeton, MIT and Boston Universities, before being appointed at Harvard in 1976, where he remained until his retirement in June 2000.

Putnam has influenced virtually every major field of contemporary philosophy, especially philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, in addition to pursuing a career in mathematics, where he specialised in recursive function theory.

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