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Birth
Imre Lakatos was born in Hungary 9 November 1922. His name was originally Imre Lipschitz at birth. He was born into a jewish family. His life would eventually be dominated by all of the chaos that resulted from the rise of the Nazi's in World War II.
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University of Debrecen Degree
Imre had spent the war years studying at the University of Debrecen, and graduated in 1944 with a degree in mathematics, physics, and philosophy. To avoid the Nazi persecution of Jew he then changed his name to Imre Molnar.
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PhD in Philosophy
Aftersome time Lakatos found himself in England where he began to study at the University of Cambridge eventually earning his doctorate in Philosophy. His work was influenced by Popper and Polya.
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Essays in the logic of Mathematical Discovery
Lakatos went on to write his own doctoral thesis "Essays in the Logic of Mathematical Discovery" Submitted to Cambridge in 1961. His thesis took a theme off of the history of Euler-Descartes formula
V−E+F=2. Later he was appointed to the London School of Economics and he taught there for 14 years until his death.
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Major Contribution 'Research Programme'
Imre major contribution to the Philosophy of Science was the idea of 'research programme', this is where he attempted to create a synthesis of Thomas Kuhn's model of the scientific theory change and Karl Popper's falsificationism.
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Talk on BBC Radio about Science and Pseudoscience
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The Book "Proofs and Refutations"
Imre Lakatos wrote this book explaining his view of mathematics. The book is written as a series of socratic dialogues that debate the proof of Euler's characteristics. This is a critical book on "formalist" philosophies of mathematics. He believed they "misrepresented the nature of the mathematics as an intellectual enterprise" and he believed it to be a "rational affair." Proofs and Refutations are not that at all.
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