Ferdinand Gonseth (1890–1975) was a Swiss mathematician and philosopher.[1]
He was born on 22 September 1890 at Sonvilier, the son of Ferdinand Gonseth, a clockmaker, and his wife Marie Bourquin. He studied at La Chaux-de-Fonds, and read physics and mathematics at ETH Zurich, from 1910 to 1914.[2]
In 1929 Gonseth succeeded Jérôme Franel as Professor of Higher Mathematics at ETH.[3] In 1947 he founded Dialectica, with Paul Bernays and Gaston Bachelard. In the same year he took the newly created chair of philosophy of science at ETH.[4]
Gonseth died on 17 December 1975 at Lausanne.[1] He was noted for his "open philosophy", according to which science and mathematics lacked absolute foundations.[5] See Idoneism.
Notes
edit- ^ a b "Gonseth, Ferdinand CTHS". Retrieved 10 May 2017.
- ^ "Gonseth, Ferdinand, Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse". Retrieved 10 May 2017.
- ^ Günther Frei; Urs Stammbach (7 March 2013). Die Mathematiker an den Zürcher Hochschulen (in German). Springer-Verlag. p. 54. ISBN 978-3-0348-8542-3.
- ^ Charles P. Enz (6 May 2010). No Time to be Brief: A Scientific Biography of Wolfgang Pauli. OUP Oxford. p. 414. ISBN 978-0-19-958815-2.
- ^ Solomon Feferman (9 January 2014). "Correspondence with Paul Bernays". Kurt Gödel: Collected Works: Volume IV: Selected Correspondence, A-G. Clarendon Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-19-100376-9.
Further reading
edit- Lauener, Henri (1977). "Ferdinand Gonseth 1890-1975". dialectica. 31 (1–2): 113–118. doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.1977.tb01357.x. ISSN 0012-2017.