Moritz Schlick

Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) was a German physicist and philosopher. He studied natural sciences and mathematics in Heidelberg, Lausanne, and Berlin, and received his doctorate under Max Planck in 1904. He completed his habilitation in 1911. A friend of Albert Einstein, Schlick was among the early scholars to examine the theory of relativity and its philosophical implications. In his major work, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, he defended epistemological realism. In 1922, he succeeded Ernst Mach as professor of the philosophy of nature at the University of Vienna. An interdisciplinary discussion group he founded there in 1924 became known as the Vienna Circle.