Wesley Charles Salmon was an American philosopher of science who made major contributions in many areas of the discipline. He was born in 1925 and died in 2001. His principal areas of inquiry and research included the concepts of scientific explanation, causality, and the logic of inference. Salmon was widely regarded as one of the most distinguished and productive philosophers of science of the twentieth century. He was educated at Wayne University and the University of Chicago, where he took an M.A. in 1947, and at the University of California at Los Angeles where he received a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1950. He studied under the supervision of Hans Reichenbach. After taking his Ph.D., Salmon had a long and productive career within academia, holding chairs at several major academic institutions. These include the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he was the Norwood Russell Hanson professor (1963-1973); the University of Arizona at Tucson (1973-1981); and the University of Pittsburgh from 1981 to 2001. At the University of Pittsburgh he was a professor in the Philosophy Department and was chair of that department from 1983 until 1999. He was the University Professor of Philosophy. Salmon was the author of numerous professional books and articles. His introductory textbook Logic was a widely used standard for many decades. It went through many editions and was translated into several languages, including Italian, Spanish, German and French. He authored several works that stand as prominent landmarks of twentieth century philosophy of science. Among these are The Foundations of Scientific Inference (1967), and Statistical Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (1984); equally significant are Four Decades of Scientific Explanation (1990) and Causality and Explanation (1998). He was also the author of numerous professional articles and edited several books. He served as a committee chair and as an officer for professional organizations such as the Philosophy of Science Association, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was president of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association from 1971 to 1972.
From the description of Wesley C. Salmon papers, 1951-2001. (University of Pittsburgh). WorldCat record id: 741516745
