Mary Hesse

Mary Hesse
Born	Mary Brenda Hesse 15 October 1924 Reigate, Surrey, England, UK
Died	2 October 2016 (aged 91)
Alma mater	Imperial College University College London
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Institutions	University of London University of Cambridge
Doctoral students	Hugh Mellor
Main interests	Philosophy of science
Website	www.collodel.org

Mary Brenda Hesse FBA (15 October 1924 – 2 October 2016) was an English philosopher of science, latterly a professor in the subject at the University of Cambridge.^[1]

Biography[]

Mary Hesse was born in Reigate, Surrey, to Ethelbert (Bertie) Thomas Hesse and Brenda Hesse (née Pelling).^[2]

From 1949, she studied at Imperial College London, where she received a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1945, followed by a PhD in electron microscopy in 1948.^[2] She earned a master's degree in 1949 from University College London.^[2] Hesse lectured on mathematics at Royal Holloway College from 1947 to 1951, and at the University of Leeds from 1951 to 1955.^[3] From 1955 to 1959 she taught philosophy and history of science at the University of London (the subject of her 1949 UCL master's degree).^[2][3] In 1960 she was appointed to a lectureship in the same subject at the University of Cambridge, and in 1968 to a readership.^[3] Hesse was a Fellow of Wolfson College from its beginning in 1965, and served as its Vice-President from 1976 to 1980.^[4] From 1975 until her early retirement in 1985, she remained at Cambridge as Professor of Philosophy of Science.^[3][2]

Hesse was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, as president of the Philosophy of Science Association in 1979, and awarded a Cambridge honorary ScD in 2002.^[3][5] Retiring in 1985, she remained living in Cambridge until her death on 2 October 2016.

Publications[]

Monographs:

• (1954) Science and the Human Imagination: Aspects of the History and Logic of Physical Science; London, England: SCM Press
• (1961) Forces and Fields: A Study of Action at a Distance in the History of Physics; London, England: Thomas Nelson and Sons
• (1974) The Structure of Scientific Inference; London, England: Macmillan, and Berkeley, California: University of California Press
• (1986) with Michael A. Arbib, The Construction of Reality; Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press^[6]

Essay collections:

• (1963) Models and Analogies in Science; London, England: Sheed and Ward (1966 revised ed.; Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press)
• (1980) Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science; Brighton, England: The Harvester Press, and Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press

Academic papers/book chapters, a selection:

• "Models and Matter" in Quanta and Reality: A Symposium, S. E. Toulmin (ed.), Hutchinson: London 1962, pp. 49-57.
• "Action at a Distance" in The Concept of Matter, E. McMullin (ed.), University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame (IN) 1963, pp. 372-39
• "Analogy and Confirmation Theory" Philosophy of Science, vol. 31, no. 4, 1964, pp. 319–327
• "An Inductive Logic of Theories" in Analyses of Theories and Methods of Physics and Psychology, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. IV, M. Radner and S. Winokur (eds), University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis 1970, pp. 164–80
• "In Defence of Objectivity", Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 58, 1974

References[]

External links[]

• Collodel, Matteo. "Website in Honour of Mary Hesse". Website in Honour of Mary Hesse. Retrieved 2019-09-16.
• Models and Meaning Change: A Brief Introduction to the Work of Mary Hesse, (2017) Steven French (Open Access) [the opening to a special issue of works on and by Mary B. Hesse for The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science]
• Hesse, Mary Brenda, 1924-2016 (2018) Nicholas Jardine, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, XVII pp. 19–28
• Obituary of Mary Hesse in 'Whewell's Gazette' (blog dedicated to the History and Philosophy of Science)