Imre Lakatos dies in London, England. Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian mathematician and philosopher of science who was arrested in 1950 and imprisoned for nearly four years during the government's brutal campaign of repression and terror.
After his release, his status as an ex-political prisoner made it hard to find work despite his qualifications. A friend helped him get a job at the Mathematical Research Institute in the Hungarian Academy of Science. In 1970, his essay Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge outlined a theory of scientific development similar to those of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn.
Lakatos argued that the "basic unit" of scientific development is not the scientific theory, such that science progresses when one theory proves to be more successful than another. Instead, he argued that the "basic unit" is really the research program. Science progresses when one research program becomes more productive and more useful than other and thus receives a greater share of social resources through funding and younger scientists.
