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Birth
Imre Lakatos, originally Imre Lipschitz, was born in Debrecen, Hungary in 1922. -
Name Changes
To avoid Nazi persecution for his Jewish heritage, Imre Lipschitz changed his name to Imre Molnar. He would later change it again to Imre Lakatos, honoring the Hungarian general Géza Lakatos. -
Education
Imre Lipschitz attended the University of Debrecen and graduated in 1944 with a degree in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy. During this time he became a devout communist, attending illegal meetings. -
Incarceration
Lakatos, now a communist, obtained a position at the Hungarian Ministry of Education after WW2. His political views landed him in trouble. He was arrested in 1950 and imprisoned for 3 years. -
Kings College, Cambridge
Lakatos left Hungary in 1956 and landed at King's College Cambridge with a Rockefeller Fellowship to write a PhD. -
London School of Economics
Lakatos attained the position of Assistant Lecturer in Karl Popper's department at the London School of Economics. -
Proofs & Refutations
From 1963 to 1964 Lakatos published a four part article series titled "Proofs & Refutations". In these articles Lakatos targeted formalism or metamathamatics. Lakatos was concerned with the growth of mathematics. He wanted to know how the accepted mathematics proofs were discovered. How does mathematics grow from informal conjectures and proofs into more formal proofs from axioms? This was somewhat of a call to arms. -
Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes
Lakatos published "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes". In this work he theorized a midway point between Popper's Falsificationism and Kuhn's model of scientific paradigms. He called these "Research Programmes". (see post for more info). Here is an excellent video outlining his ideas on research programmes: https://youtu.be/VExVaR8S_wQ -
Death
Imre Lakatos died of a heart attack in London, England in 1974. -
Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery
Following his death in 1976 , Elie Zahar and John Worrall gathered his material and published the rest of his unfinished work. This work was called "Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery"