Reichenbach

Hans Reichenbach


Born: 26 Sept 1891 in Hamburg, Germany
Died: 9 April 1953 in Los Angeles, California, USA




Hans Reichenbach studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at Berlin, Munich and Göttingen. Planck, Sommerfeld, Hilbert and Cassirer were among his teachers. He contracted a severe illness on the Russian front during World War I. Only 5 people attended Einstein's first course on relativity and Reichenbach was one of them.

Appointed to a chair in Berlin in 1926 Reichenbach founded the Berlin school of logical positivism. he When Hitler came to power in 1933 he fled to Turkey and taught at Istanbul from 1933 to 1938. He emigrated to the USA and worked at the University of California.

Reichenbach wrote on quantum mechanics, time, induction, probability and the philosophy of science. Among his works are Elements of Symbolic Logic (1947) and The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (1951).