Michael Detlefsen

Michael Detlefsen was an American philosopher, born on October 20, 1948, in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, U.S. He passed away on October 21, 2019, at the age of 71. Detlefsen held the position of McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His academic specializations included logic, history of mathematics, philosophy of mathematics, and epistemology. He completed his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College, earning an A.B. in 1971, and pursued his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University, which he received in 1976. Detlefsen's academic career began at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, in 1975, where he served as an Assistant and then Associate Professor until 1983. During his time there, he also worked as a visiting scholar at the University of Split in Croatia from 1981 to 1982. In 1983, he joined the University of Notre Dame as a Visiting Associate Professor, becoming an Associate Professor in 1984, a full professor in 1989, and a McMahon-Hank Professor in 2008. He also held visiting professorships at the University of Split, the University of Konstanz, and Paris Diderot University. Detlefsen was recognized for his work on the foundational ideas of mathematicians such as David Hilbert, Bernard Bolzano, L. E. J. Brouwer, Alonzo Church, Richard Dedekind, Gottlob Frege, Kurt Gödel, Moritz Pasch, Henri Poincaré, and Bertrand Russell. He was also the editor or co-editor of the "Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic" and served on the editorial boards of "Philosophia Mathematica" and the "Journal of Universal Computer Science." Detlefsen organized and directed the Midwest PhilMath Workshop (MWPMW) and the PhilMath Intersem.