ABSTRACT
To obtain his doctorate in 1927, Bachelard wrote two theses: the main one, Essai sur la connaissance approchée, under the direction of Abel Rey, and the complementary one, Etude sur l’évolution d'un problème de physique: la propagation thermique dans les solides, supervised by Léon Brunschvicg. Supervisors obviously had a great impact on the subsequent career of a student. According to Pierre Bourdieu, the influence of Brunschvicg could be felt as late as the Seventies: Bourdieu maintains that for the philosophers in that period, a successful career depended on ‘the registration of a thesis topic with one of the Sorbonne professors of the Fifties, who thirty years before were attached to Émile Bréhier and Léon Brunschvicg.’ 1 Bachelard's career followed in Rey's footsteps: his first appointment was in 1930 at the University of Dijon, where Rey himself had his first university post. In 1940, Bachelard succeeded Abel Rey at the Sorbonne on the chair of History and Philosophy of the Sciences.
