Michael Polanyi

Michael Polanyi ( Polanyi Mihály ( Hungarian name sequence ), born March 12, 1891 in Budapest, † February 22, 1976 in Manchester ) was a Hungarian- British chemist and philosopher. The economist Karl Polanyi was his brother.

Life and work

Michael Polanyi was born the fifth child in a liberal Jewish family. His father, Mihaly Polascek, was a successful railway engineer and railway owner, his mother was born in Vilnius as well Cecile. 1890 hungarisierte Polascek his name to Polanyi. In 1900 the father had after a storm to cease operations of its railway line and went bankrupt.

Physical chemist

Polanyi took after graduating from medical school in Budapest in 1913 to study chemistry at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe. The convening as a medical officer Austria -Hungary in World War I interrupted his studies, Polanyi was due to illness only little usage. After receiving his PhD in Physical Chemistry in Budapest in 1919, he returned to Karlsruhe, where he met his wife Magda Elizabeth Kemény, also a chemist. From 1921 closed marriage two sons, George ( Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986 born in 1929, chemists in Toronto ) were ( from 1922 to 1975, an economist ) and John out.

Polanyi moved in 1920 to Berlin, where he eventually became head of a department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Fiber Chemistry. With the set of his mathematical basis for the analysis of fiber scatter patterns he founded the field of fiber diffraction. In 1923 he moved to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry (now the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society). Because of the increasing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, and especially in the wake of the Reichstag Brands followed Polanyi 1933 a call to the chair of physical chemistry in Manchester, a position he held until 1948.

One of his most outstanding achievements is the interpretation of the plastic deformation of crystals by the mechanism of dislocation, which he published in 1934 to coincide with two other independent discoverers. Polanyi also applies along with Henry Eyring as the founder of modern chemical reaction kinetics.

Sociologist and philosopher

In his first philosophical publications Polanyi was convinced all Forschens foundation is the power of independent thought and the subject of the search for truth; he put his philosophy of science position for the first time in 1946 in Science, Faith and Society represents the creation of a specially created for him Chair of Social Sciences in Manchester presented Polanyi 1948 by all teaching duties freely and allowed him to focus on the lecture of the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen ( 1951/52 ) prepare, from which he developed his philosophical magnum opus Personal Knowledge (1958 ) in nine years of work. After his retirement in 1959 he went to Merton College, Oxford University.

In the U.S., where he held several lecture series, Polanyi came across a higher resonance. The Terry Lectures of 1962 at Yale University in 1966 published in revised form as The Tacit Dimension. Another collection central Polanyi essays from the years 1959-1968 was published in 1969 under the title Knowing and Being. The thus gained new focus of his work was devoted to his last in 1975 resulting monograph Meaning that contains Polanyi's lectures at the Universities of Texas and Chicago from 1969 to 1971.

Published in 1997 Richard T. Allen, a posthumous compilation of articles under the title of Polanyi Society, economics & philosophy: selected papers.

Michael Polanyi's philosophy has become very important to the Anglo-Saxon dialogue between science and theology.

Writings

  • Nuclear reactions. In 1932.
  • The Contempt of Freedom. 1940.
  • Full Employment and Free Trade. , 1945.
  • The Logic of Liberty. 1951, ISBN 0-226-67296-4.
  • The Study of Man. In 1959.
  • Beyond nihilism. Reidel, 1961.
  • Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post- Critical Philosophy. 1964, ISBN 0-226-67288-3.
  • Tacit knowledge. ( The tacit dimension. , 1966). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-28143-7.
  • Knowing and Being. In 1969.
  • With H. Prosch: Meaning. 1975, ISBN 0-226-67294-8.
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