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Irme Lakatos was born on November 9, 1922 in Debrecen, Hungary. His birth name was Imre Avrum Lipschitz, but he changed his name during WWII to avoid persecution for his Jewish heritage. When the Nazis invaded Hungary in March 1944, Lakatos was able to escape to Nagváryad. His family members were not as fortunate, and they were executed at Auschwitz.
Reference:
Imre Lakatos - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Sun. 13 Mar 2022. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lakatos/#WorkLaka -
Hitler and the Nazi Party came into power in 1933, and were eventually defeated in 1945. The Holocaust directly affected Irme Lakatos and his family. He is Jewish by ethnic heritage. Overall, six million Jewish people died during the Holocaust, including Lakato's immediate family members.
Reference:
Holocaust Encyclopedia - What Was The Holocaust? Sun. 13 Mar 2022. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust -
In 1966, Lakatos re-examined the history of Calculus, theories involving Augustin-Louis Cauchy, as well as the concept of uniform convergence. Much of his research focused on the concept of proofs in math. He formally challenged the processes by which individuals have tried to prove the Descartes-Euler conjecture about polyhedra. He was a professor at LSE.
Reference:
Imre Lakatos - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Sun. 13 Mar 2022. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lakatos/#WorkLaka -
Here is a collection of his major works: Lakato, Imre. “Infinite Regress and Foundations of Mathematics”, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 36: 155–94. 1962; Lakato, Imre. “A Renaissance of Empiricism in the Recent Philosophy of Mathematics”, in Lakatos 1967b: 199–202. 1967; Lakato, Imre. “Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic”, in Lakatos 1968c, 315–417. 1968. -
The Lakatos Award is given annually by the LSE for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science. This award was named for the late philosopher due to his siginifcant contributions to the field. As Popper developed the foundations for the basic falisificationist view, Lakatos helped to build on these ideas. He died in London, UK on February 2, 1974.
Reference:
Imre Lakatos - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Sun. 13 Mar 2022. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lakatos/#WorkLaka