Philipp Frank
{{Short description|Austrian-American physicist, mathematician and philosopher}}
{{Infobox academic
| name = Philipp Frank
| birth_date = March 20, 1884
| birth_place = Vienna, Austria-Hungary
| death_date = July 21, 1966
| death_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
| alma_mater = University of Vienna
| doctoral_advisor = Ludwig Boltzmann
| doctoral_students = Peter Bergmann, Reinhold Furth
| relatives = Josef Frank
}}
Philipp Frank ({{IPA|de-AT|fraŋk|lang}}; March 20, 1884 – July 21, 1966) was an Austrian-American physicist, mathematician and philosopher of the early-to-mid 20th century. He was a logical positivist, and a member of the Vienna Circle. He was influenced by Mach and was one of the Machists criticised by Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-criticism.{{Cite journal |date=1966-09-01 |title=Phillip Frank |journal=Physics Today |publisher=American Institute of Physics |volume=19 |issue=9 |pages=119 |doi=10.1063/1.3048454 |issn=0031-9228|doi-access=free }}
Biography
He studied physics at the University of Vienna and graduated in 1907 with a thesis in theoretical physics under the supervision of Ludwig Boltzmann.{{Cite journal |last1=Holton |first1=Gerald |last2=Kemble |first2=Edwin C. |last3=Quine |first3=W. V. |last4=Stevens |first4=S. S. |last5=White |first5=Morton G. |date=1968 |title=In Memory of Philipp Frank |journal=Philosophy of Science |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=1–5 |doi=10.1086/288183 |jstor=186181 |s2cid=120648267 |issn=0031-8248|doi-access=free }} He joined the faculty there in 1910. Albert Einstein recommended him as his successor for a professorship at the German Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague, a position which he held from 1912 until 1938. Doctoral students included Reinhold Furth and Peter Bergmann.{{cite news |last1=Overbye |first1=Dennis |author1-link=Dennis Overbye |date=23 October 2002 |title=Peter G. Bergmann, 87; Worked With Einstein |pages= |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/23/nyregion/peter-g-bergmann-87-worked-with-einstein.html |access-date=1 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090820011946/https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/23/nyregion/peter-g-bergmann-87-worked-with-einstein.html |archive-date=20 August 2009}}
In 1938, he was invited by Harvard University to America as a visiting lecturer on quantum theory and the philosophy of modern physics. The Germans having invaded Czechoslovakia as he was about to begin his scheduled lecture tour, Frank, a Jew, never returned to his position at Prague. And instead became a lecturer on physics and mathematics at Harvard from that year until his retirement in 1954.
In 1947 he founded the Institute for the Unity of Science as part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). This arose after Howard Mumford Jones (then president of the AAAS) had issued a call to overcome the fractionalization of knowledge, which he felt the AAAS well suited to address. The institute held regular meetings attracting a broad range of participants. Quine regarded the organisation as a "Vienna Circle in exile".{{cite book|last1=Holton|first1=Gerald|title=Science and Anti-Science|date=1993|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, Mass.}} Politically Frank was a socialist.{{cite book |last=Beddeleem |first=Martin |url=https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/215796/1/Full-text-book-Plehwe-et-al-Nine-lives-of-neoliberalism.pdf |title=Nine Lives of Neoliberalism |publisher=Verso Books |others=Plehwe, Dieter (Ed.); Slobodian, Quinn (Ed.); Mirowski, Philip (Ed.) |year=2020 |isbn=978-1-78873-255-0 |page=25 |chapter=Recoding Liberalism: Philosophy and Sociology of Science against Planning |quote=In addition to Neurath, many of its important members like Rudolf Carnap, Hans Hahn, and Philip Frank had socialist convictions and conceived the philosophical work of the Circle as intimately connected with the rationalization of politics and progressive social change.}}
Astronomer Halton Arp described Frank's Philosophy of Science class at Harvard as being his favorite elective.[https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4490 Oral History Transcript] — Dr. Halton Arp
His younger brother Josef Frank was a noted architect and designer.
Frank on Mach's principle
In lectures given during World War II at Harvard, Frank attributed to Mach himself the following graphic expression of Mach's principle:
"When the subway jerks, it's the fixed stars that throw you down."
In commenting on this formulation of the principle, Frank pointed out that Mach chose the subway for his example because it shows that inertial effects are not shielded (by the mass of the earth): The action of distant masses on the subway-rider's mass is direct and instantaneous. It is apparent why Mach's Principle, stated in this fashion, does not fit with Einstein's conception of the retardation of all distant action.
Select publications
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=_WDDAgAAQBAJ Philosophy of Science], Prentice Hall (1957)
- [https://archive.org/details/einsteinhislifet00fran Einstein: His Life and Times], A. A. Knopf (1947);{{cite journal|title=Review of Einstein. Sein Leben und seine Zeit by Philipp Frank, publ. Vieweg, 468 pages|journal=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists|date=March 1980|volume=36|issue=3|pages=50|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZAoAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA50}} [https://books.google.com/books/about/Einstein.html?id=Qs724uDW-rIC 2nd edition], Da Capo Press (2002)
- Foundations of Physics, University of Chicago Press (1946)
- [https://journals.aps.org/rmp/pdf/10.1103/RevModPhys.21.349 "Einstein's Philosophy of Science,"] Review of Modern Physics, 21, 349 (1949)
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
Further reading
- Holton, Gerald, Edwin C. Kemble, W. V. Quine, S. S. Stevens, and Morton G. White. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/186181 “In Memory of Philipp Frank.”] Philosophy of Science 35, no. 1 (1968): 1–5.
- [https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4610 Interview of Philipp Frank] by Thomas S. Kuhn on 16 July 1962, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA
External links
- {{wikisourcelang-inline||Author:Philipp Frank|Philipp Frank}}
- [https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4610 Oral history interview transcript with Philipp Frank on 16 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives]
- [https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/frank-philipp "Frank, Philipp ."] Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Encyclopedia.com.
- [https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Frank/ A biography at McTutor History of Mathematics archive.]
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Category:Philosophers of science
Category:University of Vienna alumni
Category:Harvard University Department of Philosophy faculty
Category:Czechoslovak emigrants to the United States
Category:Scientists from Vienna
Category:Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United States