The London School of Economics and Political Science announces that the Lakatos Award, of £10,000 for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, has been won by Wolfgang Spohn of the University of Konstanz for his book The Laws of Belief: Ranking Theory and its Philosophical Implications (Oxford University Press, 2012).
The Lakatos Award is given for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted, in the form of a book published in English during the previous five years. It was made possible by a generous endowment from the Latsis Foundation. The Award is in memory of the former LSE professor, Imre Lakatos, and is administered by an international Management Committee organised from the LSE.
The Committee, chaired by John Worrall, decides the outcome of the Award competition on the advice of an international, independent and anonymous panel of Selectors who produce detailed reports on the nominated books.
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Nominations can now be made for the 2013 Lakatos Award, and must be received by Friday 19th April 2013. The 2013 Award will be for a book published in English with an imprint from 2008-2013 inclusive. A book may, with the permission of the author, be nominated by any person of recognised standing within the profession. (The Management Committee is not empowered to nominate books itself but only to respond to outside nominations.)
For further details of the nomination procedure or more information on the Lakatos Award 2013, contact the Administrator, Tom Hinrichsen, at t.a.hinrichsen@lse.ac.uk
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Imre Lakatos, who died in 1974 aged 51, had been Professor of Logic with special reference to the Philosophy of Mathematics at LSE since 1969. He joined the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method in 1960. Born in Hungary in 1922, he graduated (in Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy) from Debrecen University in 1944. He then joined the underground resistance. (His mother and grandmother perished in Auschwitz.) After the War, he was active in the Communist Party and had an influential position in the Ministry of Education. In 1950 he was arrested and spent the next three years as a political prisoner. After his release, he was given refuge in the Hungarian Academy of Science where he translated western works in science and mathematics into Hungarian. After the suppression of the Hungarian uprising he escaped to Vienna and from there, with the aid of a Rockefeller fellowship, on to Cambridge, England. He there wrote his (second) doctoral thesis out of which grew his famous Proofs and Refutations (CUP, 1976). Two volumes of Philosophical Papers, edited by John Worrall and Gregory Currie, appeared in 1978, also from CUP.
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