Thomas Kuhn

Today is the birthday of physicist and historian Thomas Kuhn, who was born 18 July 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Kuhn earned a PhD in physics from Harvard in 1949 under Nobel Prize winner John Van Vleck. He then spent three years as a Harvard Junior Fellow where he moved into history and the philosophy of science. After moving to UC Berkeley he wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which is one of the most influential books in the modern development and understanding of the history of science and has also been extensively adapted in other areas of study. One of the key ideas he presented was that of the “paradigm shift”—a fundamental change in the concepts and practices of a scientific discipline, such as the development of Copernican cosmology, the shift from Aristotelian to classical mechanics, and the development of quantum mechanics. (Image credit: Bill Pierce, Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Date in History: 18 July 1922