Adolf Grünbaum (born May 15, 1923, Cologne, Germany) is a philosopher of science and a critic of psychoanalysis. He is also well known as a critic of Karl Popper's philosophy of science.
He became the first permanent Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh in 1960. In that year, he also became the founding Director of that University's Center for Philosophy of Science, serving as Director until 1978. Currently, at the University of Pittsburgh, besides being the Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy of Science, he is Co-Chairman of its Center for Philosophy of Science (since 1978), Research Professor of Psychiatry (since 1979), and Primary Research Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (since 2006).
Grünbaum is Jewish.
He received a B.A. with twofold High Distinction in Philosophy and in Mathematics from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut in 1943. He obtained both his M.S. in physics (1948) and his Ph.D in philosophy (1951) from Yale University.
He was a Selfridge Professor of Philosophy at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1956–1960), after rising through the ranks there, starting in 1950, becoming a full professor in 1955.
In the fall of 1960, Grünbaum left Lehigh University to join the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh. He and the colleagues he recruited then built world-class Philosophy and History and Philosophy of Science Departments at the university. Several of these colleagues had come from Yale University's Philosophy Department, starting in 1962. During this recruitment period the University of Pittsburgh appointed Nicholas Rescher, Wilfrid Sellars, Richard Gale, Nuel Belnap, Alan Ross Anderson, and Gerald Massey, among others.