Otto Neurath

Otto Karl Wilhelm Neurath (; 10 December 1882 – 22 December 1945) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist. He was also the inventor of the ISOTYPE method of pictorial statistics and an innovator in museum practice. Before he fled his native country in 1934, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle. Early life Neurath was born in Vienna, the son of Wilhelm Neurath (1840–1901), a well-known political economist at the time. Otto's mother was a Protestant, and he would also become one. Helene Migerka was his cousin. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna (he formally enrolled for classes only for two semesters in 1902–3). In 1906, he gained his PhD in the department of Political Science and Statistics at the University of Berlin with a thesis entitled Zur Anschauung der Antike über Handel, Gewerbe und Landwirtschaft (On the Conceptions in Antiquity of Trade, Commerce and Agriculture). He married Anna Schapire in 1907, who died in 1911 while bearing their son, Paul, and then married a close friend, the mathematician and philosopher Olga Hahn. Perhaps because of his second wife's blindness and then because of the outbreak of war, Paul was sent to a children's home outside Vienna, where Neurath's mother lived, and returned to live with both of his parents when he was nine years old. Career in Vienna Neurath taught political economy at the New Vienna Commercial Academy in Vienna until war broke out. Subsequently, he directed the Department of War Economy in the War Ministry. In 1917, he completed his habilitation thesis Die Kriegswirtschaftslehre und ihre Bedeutung für die Zukunft (War Economics and Their Importance for the Future) at Heidelberg University. In 1918, he became director of the Deutsches Kriegswirtschaftsmuseum (German Museum of War Economy, later the "Deutsches Wirtschaftsmuseum") at Leipzig. Here he worked with Wolfgang Schumann, known from the Dürerbund for which Neurath had written many articles. During the political crisis which led to the armistice, Schumann urged him to work out a plan for socialization in Saxony. Along with Schumann and Hermann Kranold developed the Programm Kranold-Neurath-Schumann. Neurath then joined the German Social Democratic Party in 1918–19 and ran an office for central economic planning in Munich.