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MAX BLACK
Max Black (February 24, 1909, Baku, Russian Empire - August 27, 1988, Ithaca, New York) was a distinguished Anglo-American philosopher, who was a leading influence in analytic philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics and science, and the philosophy of art, also publishing studies of the work of philosophers such as Frege. His translation (with Peter Geach) of Frege's published philosophical writing is a classic text.
Black was born in Azerbaijan. He grew up in London, where his family had moved in 1912, when Black was three years old. He studied mathematics at Queens' College, Cambridge where he developed an interest in the philosophy of mathematics. Russell, Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, and Ramsey were all at Cambridge at that time, and their influence on Black may have been considerable.
He graduated in 1930 and was awarded a fellowship to study at Göttingen for a year.
From 1931-36, he was mathematics master at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle.
His first book was The nature of mathematics (1933), an exposition of Principia Mathematica and of current developments in the philosophy of mathematics.
He lectured in mathematics at the Institute of Education in London from 1936 to 1940. In 1940 he moved to the United States and joined Philosophy Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1946 he accepted a professorship in philosophy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 1948, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Representative Works
Black, M. (1962). Models and metaphors: Studies in language and philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
External links
- Biography at the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
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