Roberto Torretti

Roberto Torretti (February 15, 1930 – November 12, 2022) was a Chilean philosopher, author and academic who was internationally renowned for his contributions to the history of philosophy, philosophy of physics and philosophy of mathematics.

Biography Torretti received a doctorate from the University of Freiburg under the supervision of Wilhelm Szilasi in 1954. Shortly thereafter he began lecturing in philosophy and psychology at the Institute of Education of the University of Chile in Valparaíso. He also worked for the United Nations before commencing an academic career that lasted for more than forty years, during which he taught philosophy in the University of Puerto Rico and the University of Chile. Torretti was professor emeritus of the University of Puerto Rico, and a member of the Institut International de Philosophie. In April 2005 Torretti was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain. Torretti resided in Santiago, Chile and was married to the academic and philosopher Carla Cordua.

Torretti died on November 12, 2022, at the age of 92.

Philosophical work

Torretti was greatly influenced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant and dedicated many of his works to Kant's thought. His work Manuel Kant: estudio sobre los fundamentos de la filosofia critica is considered one of the most important literary works on the thoughts of the 18th century German philosopher. Publications such as Philosophy of Geometry from Riemann to Poincaré (1978), Relativity and Geometry (1983) and El paraíso de Cantor (1998) made Torretti a leading authority on the philosophy of science. Much of Torretti's work dealt with physics and mathematics, with a major focus on relativity theory and 19th-century geometry. He devoted the book El Paraíso de Cantor to the set-theoretical tradition in logic and philosophy of mathematics. Together with Jesús Mosterín, he wrote an original and comprehensive dictionary of logic and philosophy of science.

Academic awards National Prize for the Humanities, República de Chile, 2011 Doctor honoris causa, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 2005 Fellow, Pittsburgh Center for the Philosophy of Science, 1983–1984 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, 1980–1981 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, 1975–1976 Alexander-von-Humboldt Dozentenstipendiat, Kant-Archiv, Bonn, 1964–1965