HISTORIAN

Thomas Kuhn

1922 - 1996

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Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American historian and philosopher of science whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since become an English-language idiom. Kuhn made several claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way, and that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding what scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community. Competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, there is no one-to-one correspondence of assumptions and terms. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Thomas Kuhn is the 13th most popular historian (up from 15th in 2019), the 249th most popular biography from United States (down from 206th in 2019) and the most popular American Historian.

Kuhn's most famous work is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In this book, Kuhn argues that scientific progress is not linear but rather is characterized by periods of normal science punctuated by revolutions.

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Among HISTORIANS

Among historians, Thomas Kuhn ranks 13 out of 561. Before him are Livy, Josephus, Diodorus Siculus, Alexis de Tocqueville, Polybius, and Suetonius. After him are Hecataeus of Miletus, Procopius, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Mircea Eliade, Cassius Dio, and Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1922, Thomas Kuhn ranks 11. Before him are Christopher Lee, Judy Garland, Stan Lee, Hiroo Onoda, Norodom Sihanouk, and Franjo Tuđman. After him are Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Emil Zátopek, Aage Bohr, Pierre Cardin, Ava Gardner, and Erich Hartmann. Among people deceased in 1996, Thomas Kuhn ranks 8. Before him are François Mitterrand, Marcello Mastroianni, Nevill Francis Mott, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Tupac Shakur, and Tadeusz Reichstein. After him are Carl Sagan, Gladwyn Jebb, Mohammad Najibullah, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Marguerite Duras, and Dzhokhar Dudayev.

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Thomas Kuhn ranks 249 out of 20,380. Before him are George Gershwin (1898), Gregory Peck (1916), Luis Walter Alvarez (1911), Tim Cook (1960), Sharon Tate (1943), and Lee Harvey Oswald (1939). After him are Cameron Diaz (1972), Olympias (-375), Barry White (1944), Charlton Heston (1923), Eli Whitney (1765), and Sigourney Weaver (1949).

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Among HISTORIANS In United States

Among historians born in United States, Thomas Kuhn ranks 1. After him are Jared Diamond (1937), Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1917), Donna Haraway (1944), Hayden White (1928), Richard Sennett (1943), Barbara W. Tuchman (1912), Timothy D. Snyder (1969), Christopher Browning (1944), Linda Nochlin (1931), Howard Zinn (1922), and Deborah Lipstadt (1947).

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