Kedrov, Bonifatii Mikhailovich

Born Nov. 27 (Dec. 10), 1903, in Yaroslavl. Soviet chemist, philosopher, historian of science. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966); corresponding member (1960). Member of the CPSU since 1918. Son of M. S. Kedrov.

Kedrov graduated from the chemistry department of Moscow State University in 1930. From 1935 to 1941 he was engaged first in party and then in scientific work. From 1941 to 1945, Kedrov served in the Soviet Army. From 1945 to 1949 and again from 1958 to 1962, he was affiliated with the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was editor in chief of the journal Voprosy Filosofii from 1947 to 1949, and he served on the staff of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia from 1949 to 1952. From 1946 to 1958 and again since 1971, Kedrov has been a professor at the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU. From 1962 to 1973 he was the director of the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and in 1973–74 he directed the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Since 1974 he has headed the section of the History of Science and Logic at the Institute of Natural Science and Technology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Kedrov has done important work in thermodynamics and physical statistics. He is conducting research in materialist dialectics, philosophical problems of natural science, the history and philosophy of science, and the psychology and logic of scientific discoveries. The central problem explored in his research is the unity of the historical and the logical in analyzing the history of the development of scientific knowledge and in classifying the sciences. Kedrov formulated several principles of dialectic logic, including the principle of the direct relationship between the scope and content of developing knowledge, the principle of the definition of scientific concepts “by law,” and the principle of the correlation between structure and genesis.

Kedrov is a member of the International Academy on the History of Science (since 1963), a foreign member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade (since 1965), a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (since 1972), and a member of the Leopoldine German Academy of Researchers in Natural Sciences (since 1972). He has been awarded the Order of Lenin, four other orders, and several medals.