Hélène Metzger | |
---|---|
Born | 26 August 1889 Chatou |
Died |
7 March 1944 (aged 54) On the way to Auschwitz |
Nationality | French |
Fields | philosophy, history of science |
Influences | Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, André Lalande, Abel Rey, Léon Brunschvicg, Émile Meyerson, Alexandre Koyré, Henri Berr, Lucien Febvre |
Influenced | Gaston Bachelard, Thomas Kuhn |
Hélène Metzger (26 August 1889 – 7 March 1944) was a French philosopher of science and historian of science. In her writings she focused mainly on the history of chemistry. Due to her Jewish background, she became a victim of the Holocaust in the Second World War, dying in Auschwitz concentration camp.
Because of her early death, her oeuvre is limited in size, but has nonetheless been influential. She published nine books, thirty-six articles and numerous reviews. Contemporaries such as Gaston Bachelard and Émile Meyerson referred often to her works and also Thomas Kuhn, in the introduction of his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) referred to her as one of his main inspirations. She was the niece of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, an influential French anthropologist.