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::: center home >> about >> brief history, page 2

Massey became center director in 1988. With John Earman and Allen Janis as associate directors, the center under Massey's direction further developed its international dimension. The Visiting Fellows Program was enlarged; the University of Pittsburgh entered into an archival collaboration with the University of Konstanz; the center joined Konstanz's Zentrum Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie to co-sponsor the Pittsburgh-Konstanz Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science; the series of quadrennial international meetings of the Pittsburgh Center Fellowship was firmly established; and a new series of volumes published jointly by the University of Pittsburgh Press and the Universitätsverlag Konstanz was launched. All these developments were made possible by the aforementioned 1984 operating grant in conjunction with a substantial 1991 operating grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

Through the Pittsburgh-Konstanz archival collaboration and the courtesy of the University of Minnesota, copies of the papers of Herbert Feigl were added to the Archives for Scientific Philosophy in 1989. Grants from the Hillman Foundation enabled Hillman Library to acquire the papers of Bruno de Finetti and Wilfrid Sellars for the Archives of Scientific Philosophy in 1991.

In late 1992, the Center received a major gift, which assured its continued financial viability. At that time, Harvey E. Wagner, Chairman of Teknekron Corporation, and his wife, Leslie, decided to create the first endowment of the Center with an initial $1 million gift. The gift was given in honor of Grünbaum, who had been Wagner's philosophy of science teacher in the mid-1950s.

In September, 1997, James Lennox replaced Massey as director of the Center.  Lennox's tenure, which saw the 40th anniversary of the Center and the new millenium, brought new financial security, new public outreach programs and further international collaboration.

Important financial developments included three grants, during 1999-2002, awared to the Visiting Fellows program by the Sarah Scaife Foundation. In 2000, Chancellor Mark Nordenberg and Provost James Maher announced the establishement of a $1 million endowment for the Center, matching the Wagner Endowment.

A number of yearly public lectures on the philosophy of science were innaugurated through collaborations with local foundations and art galleries such as the Bayer Foundation, the Carnegie Science Center, the Mattress Factory and the Carnegie Museum of art.

Meanwhile, in 2003, the University of Pittsburgh signed Agreements of Cooperation with the Universidad A Caruna in Spain and with the University of Catania in Sicily, complementing the local thrust with continued global interaction and building on the successes of the Pittsburgh-Konstanz and Pittsburgh-Greece relationships.

Within the University community, the Center also continued its active collaboration with the Hillman Library Archives for Scientific Philosophy with the addition of the archives of Carl Hempel, Wesley Salmon and Richard Jeffrey.

In September 2005, James Lennox ended his long and fruitful tenure as Director and was replaced by John D. Norton. Since Norton was on sabbatical for the Fall term of 2005, John Earman served as an Interim Director for that term.

In 2008, the Center began its Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. The program invites two Postdoctoral Fellows to visit for a two-term academic year, with the first full complement coming in the fall of 2009.

With the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program well underway, in 2012 the Center began a Senior Visiting Fellowship Program. Initially implemented as the Wagner Risk Fellowship, it was then made a permanent part of the roster of Center programs. Our first Senior Visiting Fellow was Kyle Stanford from UC Irvine. Since then, the program has been further refined with an attempt to pair subject specialist Senior Fellows with Visiting Fellows working in the same or similar fields of exploration.

Also in 2012 administrative assistant Carol Weber retired after ten years at the Center. Carol was replaced by Cheryl Greer, who took on Carol's duties of tech support and website administration.

Karen Kovalchick retired in 2015 after twenty years of service to the Center and its Fellows. Carolyn Oblak took up Karen's position as Assistant Director in January 2016.

For more detailed accounting of the Center history from 2006 forward, click the links in the right column on the News page.

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Revised 1/20/16 - Copyright 2006-2009