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Max Black
Max Black (1909-1988) was a British-American philosopher, who was a leading figure in analytic philosophy in the years after World War II. He made contributions to the philosophy o...view moreMax Black (1909-1988) was a British-American philosopher, who was a leading figure in analytic philosophy in the years after World War II. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics and science, and the philosophy of art, also publishing studies of the work of philosophers such as Frege. His translation (with Peter Geach) of Frege’s published philosophical writing is a classic text.
Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, of Jewish descent, Black grew up in London, where his family had moved in 1912. He studied mathematics at Queens’ College, Cambridge where he developed an interest in the philosophy of mathematics. He graduated in 1930 and was awarded a fellowship to study at Göttingen for a year. He was then mathematics master at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle from 1931-1936. His first book, The Nature of Mathematics, an exposition of Principia Mathematica and of current developments in the philosophy of mathematics, was published in 1933.
From 1936-1940, Black lectured in mathematics at the Institute of Education in London. In 1940 he moved to the United States and joined the Philosophy Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1946 he accepted a professorship in philosophy at Cornell University. In 1948, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963.
Black died on August 27, 1988 in Ithaca, New York, aged 79.view less