Gunnar Skirbekk


Gunnar Skirbekk is a Norwegian philosopher. He is professor emeritus at the Department of Philosophy and the Center for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.

Academic career

Skirbekk studied at the University of Oslo 1957–59, in Paris 1960–61, and in Tübingen 1961–62. He was later a research assistant for Herbert Marcuse and Avrum Stroll at the University of California, San Diego 1966–67; dr.philos. at the University of Bergen in 1970; research at UCSD 1979–80, 1983, and 1991.
He became an assistant teacher at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bergen 1962. He was made associate professor in 1964, and then professor in the philosophy of the sciences and the humanities in 1979. He was made Professeur invité at the University of Nice in Sophia Antipolis in Spring 1997. In the Winter 2000–2001 he was Professor at the department of philosophy of Freie Universität Berlin. He was Advisory Professor at East China Normal University from 1998, and Fellow at the Hans Jonas Zentrum in Berlin from 1998. Founder of the Center for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities at the University of Bergen, and director from 1987–1991, 1995–1997, and 2001–2003.
He received the Lauritz Meltzer Award for most outstanding research at the University of Bergen in the period 1990–1996. The Tønnes Andenæs Award, together with Nils Gilje, for Filosofihistorie 1–2, in 1999. He is translated into more than 20 languages. In 2013 he received the Nynorsk User of the Year award.

Editorial and group positions