Herbert Feigl was born in 1902 in Reichenberg, Bohemia. He studied mathematics, physics, physiology and philosophy at the Universities of Munich and Vienna. In 1927, he received his doctorate at Vienna for a disertation on the foundations of probability and induction in the exact sciences. From 1925 to 1930, Feigl was an important member of the Vienna Circle. In 1931, he joined the Philosophy Dept. at the University of Iowa; and in 1941 he accepted an appointment as Professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, where he remained untiil his death in 1989. He was responsible, among other noteworthy achievements, for establishing the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science in 1953. Feigl was one of the leading proponents of logical positivism. He also made significant contributions in the field of contempory materialism. Unlike many others, he considered materialism a serious philosophical theory. In his work on the central-state theory of materialism, Feigl made extensive use of advances in physiological psychology.