Hannes Leitgeb, Chair of Logic and Philosophy of Language and co-director of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at LMU Munich, is the winner of the 2025 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.
The Leibniz Prize, awarded by the German Research Foundation, is known as “the most important research award in Germany,” and includes funding of up to €2.5 million.
The selection committee writes:
A central vision of the philosopher and mathematician Leibniz was to solve philosophical problems mathematically. For him, this meant that “two philosophers who get into an argument do not argue any differently than two arithmeticians, and it is enough for them to take a pen in their hand, sit down in front of a tablet and say to each other: ‘Calculemus!’ (Let’s calculate!)”. The mathematician and philosopher Hannes Leitgeb is also working towards this goal. He has illuminated the tradition of mathematical-analytical philosophy with important historical studies, expanded it with the help of creative ideas and applied it to numerous phenomena from philosophy and the cognitive and linguistic sciences. With a groundbreaking theory, he showed how rational beliefs and their dependence on new data can be justified. In addition, he made a significant contribution to the understanding of indefinite and vague concepts and defined the framework in which expressions can be understood that refer to the same thing but have different meanings. [translation by Google Translate]
You can learn more about the prize and access a list of its previous winners here.
(via Christian List)
can’t think of a better philosopher and a better person to win this. Our discipline is a better place because of people like Hannes Leitgeb
Amen. So richly deserved.