Hilary Putnam

Hilary Whitehall Putnam lived from 1926 to 2016 and was an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, a leading figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. He wrote on the philosophy of mind, language, mathematics and science, and outside philosophy he contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis he developed the Davis-Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem, and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem. He was known for subjecting his own philosophical positions to the same rigorous scrutiny as those of others, which earned him a reputation for frequently changing his views.