Hans Reichenbach: biography of this German physicist and philosopher

Among the different philosophical movements that emerged in Europe throughout the 20th century, Reichenbach is one of the leading authors.

Below we will be able to better know all the episodes in the life of this philosopher and thus better understand which were the great contributions that he was able to make in this discipline thanks to the extensive training that he received and that allowed him to combine different knowledges. Here you will find a biography of Hans Reichenbach in summary format.

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Short biography of Hans Reichenbach

Hans Reichenbach was born in 1891 in the city of Hamburg, at that time belonging to the German Empire. His family was of Jewish descent, although they had converted to Protestant Christianity. His upbringing took place in his hometown. After completing primary and secondary education, he decided to start his higher studies.

His university life was intense. On the one hand, he studied engineering at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences, but also

he decided to continue his studies, this time in the field of mathematics and physics on the one hand, and philosophy on the other.. To do this, he successively enrolled in different German universities, such as Berlin, Munich, Göttingen or Erlangen.

All this academic experience of Hans Reichenbach was also nourished by the experience of having had some professors who were true eminences in their respective fields. Some examples might be Ernst Alfred Cassirer in philosophy, Max Bon and David Hilbert in philosophy. mathematics, or Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld and Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck himself, who would achieve the Nobel Prize.

But university life was not only worth it for his formation, since he was also a very active component in different student movements. He joined the Freistudentenschaft, one of the most important groups. Likewise, he was present when the Freideutsche Jugend was created; he wrote different articles in this field, in which he spoke about the reform of the universities.

This activism progressively brought him closer to communist groups, also counting on the influence of his brother, who was a member of the left-wing communist movement. Hans Reichenbach joined the Communist Workers' Party of Germany. He achieved a prominent position in it, and so much so that he participated on behalf of the party in the Executive Committee of the Communist International.

He became increasingly involved in the political side of student organizations, to the point of founding and presiding over the Berlin Student Socialist Party. The germ of this group already existed in a veiled way, due to the vetoes that existed to these movements, but it was with Hans Reichenbach that he definitely crystallized into an organization visible.

During this time he had the opportunity to interact with some of the most important activists of the time in Germany, such as Alexander Schwab or Karl August. Wittfogel, although both abandoned their communist position later, and even Wittfogel denied this ideology after the events of the Second War. World.

However, despite these intense years of involvement in political and protest activities, Hans Reichenbach completely abandoned this facet of his life around the year 1920. It was as a result of attending a series of lectures by one of the most important scientists in the history of mankind, Albert Einstein, in which learned about the theory of relativity, which would revolutionize the world of physics.

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Development of your career

After obtaining the degrees listed above, Hans Reichenbach received his doctorate, publishing a thesis in which he spoke about the concept of probability to represent mathematically the reality. In these years the First World War broke out, in which his country, Germany, was involved, for what he was forced to serve in the army, although in 1917 he would return home, for reasons of Health.

Come the year 1920, he began his stage as an academic, working for the Technische Hochschule at the University of Stuttgart. In addition, he also published his work, "The theory of relativity and a priori knowledge", where he united two of his fields of knowledge, which were physics and philosophy. In this volume, he confronted some of Kant's views.

This was the beginning of a prolific era in which he published a succession of such books, such as Axiomatization of the theory of relativity, in 1924, From Copernicus to Einstein, in 1927, or The philosophy of space and time, in 1928. Hans Reichenbach tried to propose approaches between positivist philosophy logic and the relativity theory of physics.

His good relationship with Planck, von Laue or Albert Einstein himself, made it easier for him to join the physics department of the University of Berlin, as an assistant professor. His way of teaching was a small revolution, as it broke away from rigid academic schemes and promoted an atmosphere of debate. which was not frequent at that time.

In 1928, Hans Reichenbach he created the Berlin Circle, an association whose backdrop was the philosophy of logical empiricism. This group was joined by personalities such as David Hilbert, Richard Edler von Mises, Carl Gustav “Peter” Hempel and Kurt Grelling. He also launched a philosophy magazine, in partnership with author Rudolf Carnap. The publication was named Erkenntnis, a term that means knowledge.

Exile to Turkey and the United States

Come the year 1933, With the rise of Nazism to power in Germany, reprisals against people of Jewish origin began, as was the case with Hans Reichenbach, however much his family had converted to Protestantism and he himself had married Selma Menzel under this faith.

Therefore, because of the new racial laws that were imposed in Germany, Reichenbach lost his position at the University of Berlin. He knew that this was only the beginning, so he decided to leave the country immediately. His first destination, outside the German borders, was Turkey.

In this country he was well received and He soon resumed his teaching career, this time at Istanbul University, where he headed the philosophy department.. For the next several years, he taught at this institution, while organizing seminars and courses on other disciplines in which he was also an expert. In 1935 he published another of his famous works, "The theory of probability".

Thanks to his contacts with authors such as Charles William Morris, he was able to agree to incorporate him to the University of California, Los Angeles, as professor of philosophy, so in 1938 he moved to the United States to take a new step in his career. Thanks to the work of Hans Reichenbach, the philosophy department of this university became a reference in the United States.

Throughout this stage, he trained students who would end up emerging in this field. Some of the most notable could be Wesley Charles Salmon, Hilary Whitehall Putnam and Carl Hempel, who had already dealt with Hans Reichenbach previously and belonged to the Berlin Circle. During these years, he also continued to publish works, including some of the most important volumes that he created.

Among them are, for example, "Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics", 1944, "Elements of Logic symbolic ", from 1947 and probably his most influential book," The rise of scientific philosophy ", which he published in the year 1951.

Last years and death

Hans Reichenbach was at the height of his career. He taught at a prestigious university, was a reference in his field and had just published some of his best works. Some of his more recent works dealt with such exciting topics as the philosophy of time and other questions about the scientific laws of nature..

In his research on time, he studied this concept in language and established three different typologies, which would be the time of speech, the time of the event and the time of reference. This differentiation was later collected by language experts to distinguish between different verb tenses.

In fact, this work crystallized in his last two works, which were "The direction of time" and "Nomological declarations and admissible operations". Unfortunately, both were published posthumously, as Hans Reichenbach died suddenly from a heart attack. It was 1953 and he was 61 years old when this tragic event happened.

In any case, his career was already successful enough to leave a legacy that continues to this day.