Name George Padamadan Died July 25, 2004 | Role Philosopher | |
George Padamadan (November 10, 1932 – July 25, 2004) was a self-described amateur philosopher from India.
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Biography
George Padamadan lived in a village called Thuruthur, Puthenvelikara, in the Ernakulam district of Kerala state in India. He was educated at St.Joseph's College in Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, and later studied at Loyola College, Madras but could not complete his studies as he was expelled from the college due to his Marxist leanings.
George knew many languages such as Greek, Latin, French and German and read many philosophical works in the original language.
In 1993 he self-published a paper titled "An Amateur Looks on the Fallibilist Epistemology of Mathematics", which challenged the findings of 'Proof and Analysis Theory' from Proofs and Refutations by the Hungarian philosopher Imre Lakatos. This paper was posted on one of the pages of the New York-based Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He similarly wrote two more papers in 2002, "Creative Dynamism at the Root of the Evolution of Mathematical Sciences" and "Logical Paradoxes and their Formal Resolution".
George taught children Maths and English at a local tutorial college, Sincere Tutorials. Paliath Narendran, a 10th standard student of Government High School, Chendamangalam was one such student. Narendran later went on to become a mathematician at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Research Institute, New York. It was he who introduced George Padamadan to the mathematical philosophers of the west, especially Soloman Feferman, who was considered as an authority on mathematical logic.
Padamadan's passion for mathematics saw him get into a research on advanced mathematical logic. V.K. Hary, a former student and advocate, commented in the Kerala News (July 26, 2004), that
"He was a humanist and never complained about anything except that he had practically no one to interact at his desired level of Mathematics. But he continued to work silently."
Published papers
George Padamadan published three papers, all through Rensselaer Polytechnic Research Institute, New York.