Mark Steiner (; May 6, 1942 – April 6, 2020) was an American-born

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

i professor of

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

. He taught

philosophy of mathematics Philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of mathematics and its relationship to other areas of philosophy, particularly epistemology and metaphysics. Central questions posed include whether or not mathem ...

and

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

. Steiner died after contracting

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

Biography

Mark Steiner was born in

the Bronx The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County, New York, West ...

, New York. He graduated from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

in 1965 and studied at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

as a

Fulbright Fellow The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

. He then received his Ph.D. in philosophy from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1972 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "On mathematical knowledge." Steiner taught at Columbia from 1970 to 1977. Steiner died on April 6, 2020, in Shaare Zedek Medical Center, after contracting the

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are ...

during the

COVID-19 pandemic in Israel The COVID-19 pandemic in Israel is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The first case in Israel was confirmed on 21 February 2020, when a female citize ...

Academic career

Steiner is best known for his book ''The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem'', in which he attempted to explain the historical utility of

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

. The book may be considered an extended meditation on the issues raised by

Eugene Wigner Eugene Paul Wigner (, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of th ...

's article " The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences". Steiner is also the author of the book ''Mathematical Knowledge''. Steiner also translated Reuven Agushewitz's philosophical work ''Emune un Apikorses'' from Yiddish.

References

External links

Faculty address page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Steiner, Mark 1942 births 2020 deaths Writers from the Bronx American emigrants to Israel Israeli people of American-Jewish descent Jewish American academics Jewish philosophers Philosophers of mathematics Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Princeton University alumni 20th-century Israeli philosophers 21st-century Israeli philosophers Columbia College (New York) alumni Columbia University faculty