Sir Karl Raimund Popper, C. H., F. B. A. 28 July 1902—17 September 1994.

Abstract

Karl Raimund Popper, the philosopher and methodologist of science, died on 17 September 1994 at the age of 92 years. Locke was a Fellow of the Royal Society, of course, and some other early Fellows, Boyle in particular, have a secure place in the history of philosophy. Whewell, an intellectual forerunner of Popper's (Medawar 1967), was elected in 1820 when the Royal Society was, according to a contemporary philosopher, ‘in a state of unstable equilibrium’; he was a mere 26, a lecturer in mathematics, and was to occupy the chair of mineralogy at Cambridge for some years before writing his exceptional studies in the history and philosophy of science. Whitehead and Russell were elected as Fellows for their mathematical work, as have been one or two more recently elected logicians. Popper is the only philosopher in modern times to have been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society primarily in recognition of his philosophical achievement.