Paul Benacerraf

Paul Joseph Salomon Benacerraf was a French-born American philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of mathematics. He spent his entire academic career at Princeton University, teaching from 1960 until his retirement in 2007. Benacerraf held the prestigious Stuart Professor of Philosophy title from 1974 and retired as the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy. He was born in Paris on March 26, 1930, to Abraham Benacerraf and Henrietta Lasry. His family relocated to Caracas, Venezuela, in 1939, and later to New York City. Benacerraf attended Princeton University for both his undergraduate and graduate studies. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998. His notable contributions to the field include his 1965 paper "What Numbers Could Not Be," where he argued for structuralism in mathematics by highlighting the distinct but adequate set-theoretic definitions of natural numbers proposed by Zermelo and von Neumann, leading to what is known as "Benacerraf's identification problem." In his 1973 paper "Mathematical Truth," he presented "Benacerraf's epistemological problem," arguing that it is difficult to simultaneously provide a satisfactory explanation of mathematical truth and our knowledge of mathematics, especially when considering the epistemological challenges posed by abstract mathematical objects. Benacerraf passed away on January 13, 2025, at the age of 94. He was the older brother of Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Baruj Benacerraf.