Yehuda Elkana

Yehuda Elkana (Hebrew יהודה אלקנה, born in 1934 in Subotica, Vojvodina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia; † 21 September 2012 in Jerusalem, Israel ) was a philosopher of science and historians of science.

Elkanah came from Hungarian-speaking Jews who relocated in 1944 from Yugoslavia to Szeged. He survived the Auschwitz concentration camp as a teenager (as well as his family, who had been assigned to forced labor in the reconstruction of Austrian cities) and immigrated to Israel in 1948. He was in a kibbutz and then in Hebrew Herzliya Gymnasium in Tel Aviv. He studied physics, mathematics and history of science in 1955 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, graduating in 1966 with a Master 's degree, while he also taught at the Gymnasia Rehavia in Tel Aviv. He received his doctorate at Brandeis University with the history of science work "On the Emergence of the Energy Concept" in 1968. He then taught for a year at Harvard University, and from 1968 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, History of Science and Philosophy of Science, at times as the Faculty Board. He was from 1968 to 1993 director of the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, and from 1981 to 1991 director of the Cohn Institute for the History of Science and - Philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv. From 1987 to 2006 he was a " Permanent Fellow " at the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin .. From 1995 to 1999 he was Professor of Philosophy of Science at ETH Zurich. From 1999 to 2009 he was President and Rector of Central European University in Budapest, where he built on behalf of the patron George Soros. Most recently, he lived in Berlin, where 2009/2010 he worked on a project to reform the curriculum of universities and the Institute for Advanced Study, and a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science was .. Until shortly before his death Elkanah worked with Hannes dished on his recent work entitled: "The University in the 21st century: Towards a new unity of teaching, research and society."

Elkanah was in 1973/74 Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and was a 1977/78 Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University.

Elkanah was a corresponding member of the International Academy for the History of Science and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Collegium Helveticum. He was co-founder and publisher of the journal Science in Context.

He gave writings of William Whewell and Hermann von Helmholtz ( in English translation) out and was one of the organizers of the Einstein Centennial Symposium in Jerusalem in 1979. He delivered the keynote speech for the celebration of the Year of Einstein in Berlin in 2005 and conducted research at the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech.

In Israel, he is known for an article in the daily newspaper Haaretz in 1988, which triggered a debate to what extent the Holocaust should be used for the identity of Israel. In his opinion, this would be exploited by nationalist circles in Israel and the dialogue with the Palestinians negative preload. At the same time he joined in countries like Germany for a continuation of the memory.

Publications

  • Discovery of the conservation of Energy, Harvard University Press, 1974 ( Preface I. Bernard Cohen, emerged from his dissertation)
  • Anthropology of knowledge. The development of knowledge as epic theater a cunning reason, Suhrkamp, ISBN 978-3-518-57940-4, 1986
  • Essays on the cognitive and political organization of science, Berlin, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 1994
  • As editor with Everett Mendelsohn: Sciences and cultures: anthropological and historical studies of the sciences, Kluwer, 1981 ( in of Elkanah: A programmatic attempt at on anthropology of knowledge, pp. 1-68 )
  • As editor with Gerald Holton: Albert Einstein: historical and cultural perspectives, the centennial symposium in Jerusalem, Dover 1997
  • As Publisher: The interaction in between science and philosophy, Humanities Press 1974
  • As editor with Joshua Lederberg, Robert K. Merton, Harriet Zuckerman, Arnold Thackray: Towards a metric of science: the advent of science indicators, Wiley 1978
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