First, I never heard of Patrick Suppes in any of my physics studies. Or at all, until he was mentioned here. So this puts a cap on the significance of his contributions to the “foundations of physics”. Second, the medal is “National Medal of Science for Behavioral and Social Science”, not anything physics-related (unless you consider “subjective probability” physics). Now, my attitude toward “philosophy of science” roughly matches that of Feynman, so I am not going to touch that one. What’s left is “the theory of measurement”, which am not in a position to evaluate, except to say that, from the list of relevant publications it seems like he worked in the decision-theoretic area, rather than any physical measurement. Now, maybe he did make “significant contributions” to decision theory, I cannot tell, except that this forum does not mention him much while discussing decision-theoretic issues.
Not to put him down, he did a lot of interesting work and is likely in the top 0.1% of physics PhDs by various metrics, just not as “foundational” as the wiki article presents him.
First, I never heard of Patrick Suppes in any of my physics studies. Or at all, until he was mentioned here. So this puts a cap on the significance of his contributions to the “foundations of physics”. Second, the medal is “National Medal of Science for Behavioral and Social Science”, not anything physics-related (unless you consider “subjective probability” physics). Now, my attitude toward “philosophy of science” roughly matches that of Feynman, so I am not going to touch that one. What’s left is “the theory of measurement”, which am not in a position to evaluate, except to say that, from the list of relevant publications it seems like he worked in the decision-theoretic area, rather than any physical measurement. Now, maybe he did make “significant contributions” to decision theory, I cannot tell, except that this forum does not mention him much while discussing decision-theoretic issues.
Not to put him down, he did a lot of interesting work and is likely in the top 0.1% of physics PhDs by various metrics, just not as “foundational” as the wiki article presents him.