Michael Detlefsen ( 1948 - 2019 )
Michael Detlefsen (20 October 1948 – 21 October 2019) was a McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His areas of special interest were logic, history of mathematics, philosophy of mathematics and epistemology.
Detlefsen began his academic career as an Assistant, and then Associate Professor, at the University of Minnesota, Duluth in 1975. He remained there until 1983 but would also hold a position as a visiting scholar at the University of Split, Croatia, from 1981 to 1982. He began teaching at Notre Dame as a Visiting Associate Professor in 1983 and became an Associate Professor there in 1984. He was promoted to full professor in 1989 and installed as a McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy in 2008. He held visiting professorships at the University of Split (1981–1982), the University of Konstanz (1987–1988, 1994), and at the Paris Diderot University (2007). He held a senior chaire d'excellence with the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) in France from 2007 through 2011. He was a past president of the Philosophy of Mathematics Association (PMA).Scholarly work
Detlefsen wrote a number of works on the foundational ideas of the German mathematician David Hilbert, and other major nineteenth and twentieth century foundational thinkers, held research fellowships from various foundations including the International Research and Exchange Commission.He was editor or co-editor in chief of the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic , the Philosophia Mathematica , the Journal of Universal Computer Science and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.