Welcome to the website of Adolf Grünbaum.
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Professor Grünbaum´s writings
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as well as information about him and his work.
Adolf Grünbaum's writings deal with the philosophy of physics, the theory of
scientific rationality, the philosophy of psychiatry, and the critique
of theism.
His 12 books include Philosophical Problems of Space and Time (second edition, 1973), Modern Science and Zeno's Paradoxes (second edition, 1968), and The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique (1984). In 1993, he published Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis: A Study in the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. Oxford University Press in New York City will publish two volumes of his Collected Papers under the overall title Philosophy of Science in Action. The first volume is devoted to his writings in the philosophy of physics. He has contributed nearly 390 articles to anthologies and to philosophical and scientific periodicals.
His offices include the presidency of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division), and of the Philosophy of Science Association (two terms).
He has been elected to two other, but interconnected presidencies; For 2004-2005, he was the President of the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS), which is the world-wide umbrella organization of the various national associations or societies in the philosophy of science, on the one hand, and of the history of science, on the other. Upon completing this presidency, Grünbaum automatically became the President for 2006-2007 of the IUHPS.
He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a member of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. In 1985, he delivered the Gifford Lectures in Scotland as well as the Werner Heisenberg Lecture to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich. In mid-2003, he delivered the three Leibniz Lectures at the University of Hannover, Germany.
He is the recipient of a 1985 "Senior U.S. Scientist" Humboldt Prize, and of Italy's 1989 "Fregene Prize" for science (Rome, Italy). All four prior recipients of this Prize, which is awarded by the Italian Parliament, were Nobel laureates in one of the natural sciences. In May 1990, Yale University awarded him the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal for outstanding achievement. And in May 1995, he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Konstanz in Germany. In May 1998, the venerable University of Parma in Italy awarded him its Silver Medal in recognition of his "prestigious career." In 1989, he received the first-ever "Master Scholar and Professor Award" from the President of the University of Pittsburgh. Furthermore, in March 1998, that University dedicated The Adolf Grünbaum Philosophical Reading Room.
Currently, he is the Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy of Science, Primary Research Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Research Professor of Psychiatry, and Chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science, all at the University of Pittsburgh. In April 2003, he resigned from the Department of Philosophy there, while retaining his Mellon Chair and all of his other appointments.
In 1983, a Festschrift for him, edited by R.S. Cohen & L. Laudan, appeared under the title Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum. It was reprinted in 1992. Another Festschrift, Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds: Essays on the Philosophy of Adolf Grünbaum, edited by J. Earman, A. Janis, G. Massey and N. Rescher, containing the proceedings of the October, 1990 International Colloquium in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum, was published in 1993.
In 1992, Mr. Harvey Wagner, Chief Executive Officer of the Teknekron Corporation, and his wife Leslie Wagner, honored Professor Grünbaum for his role as an undergraduate teacher of Mr.Wagner's by a gift of $1,000,000 to the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh.
In mid-October 2002, the Center for Philosophical Education in Santa Barbara, California, held a two-day conference entitled "The Adolf Grünbaum Symposium in Honor of the Works of Professor Adolf Grünbaum." Its proceedings will be published by Prometheus Press, forthcoming under the title Philosophy of Physics and Psychology: Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum, edited by A. Jokic.
A more complete biographical account can be found under the "Grünbaum" entry in the 21st Edition of Who's Who in the World, the 54th Edition of Who's Who in America, or the 2006 Encyclopedia Judaica.
Professor Adolf Grünbaum
University of Pittsburgh
2510 Cathedral of Learning
Pittsburgh, PA 15260-2510
Office Tel: 412-624-5738
Office Fax: 412-648-1068
E-mail: grunbaum@pitt.edu