The primary proponent of the "covering law" theory of explanation and of the paradoxes of confirmation, Carl G. Hempel was among the most important philosophers of science of the twentieth century. With Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach he was a leader in the transformation of the rigid, somewhat simplistic, and doctrinaire philosophical movement known as logical positivism into its more subtle and nuanced successor, logical empiricism. His ideas on induction, confirmation, and scientific explanation exerted a profound influence on more than a generation of philosophers.

Carl Gustav Hempel (known since his youth as "Peter" to his friends) was born in Eden, near Berlin, on 8 January 1905 to Karl Friedrich and Charlotte Kessler Hempel. His father owned a fruit orchard. Hempel was educated at a village school until his father became a civil servant for the city of Berlin; the family then moved to a suburb of the city, where...