Wolfgang Spohn - Biography#

Wolfgang Spohn studied philosophy, logic & philosophy of science and mathematics at the University of Munich from 1969 -1976. He acquired the PhD in 1976 with a thesis on the foundations of decision theory and the German Habilitation in 1984 with a thesis on the theory of causality. He was an assistant professor at the University of Munich (1976 - 86), an associate professor at the University of Regensburg (1986 - 91), and a full professor at the Universities of Bielefeld (1991 - 96) and of Konstanz (since 1996).

His areas of specialization and competence range widely within systematic philosophy, from epistemology and philosophy of science over metaphysics, ontology, philosophy of mind and language, and philosophical logics up to the theory of practical rationality, in particular decision and game theory.

His writings comprise 3 books (and the Habilitation thesis), 8 book editions, and 97 papers in all those fields.

He received various honors, but two stand out: the Lakatos Award 2012, which is often considered to be the most important award in philosophy of science and which he received as the first non-Anglosaxon, and the Frege Prize 2015, which is the most renowned German award in analytic philosophy.

He personally directed 17 research projects with a funding sum of ca. 3 million Euros, and he was a co-applicant of 4 joint networks with a funding sum of ca. 17 million Euros. He was speaker of the first DFG research unit in philosophy and is the speaker of a second one. He was first supervisor of over 30 PhD students and first mentor of 8 Habilitation theses. He widely served in the community, over 10 years as a dean, study dean, and head of department, over 8 years as a member of the senate of the University of Konstanz, as a member of various advisory boards (e.g. for the CMU, Pittsburgh, and the ZiF, Bielefeld), and as an editor (editor-in-chief of ERKENNTNIS 1988 – 2001, editorial activities in 11 further journals or series).