Notes |
- Philosopher, mathematician, prolific writer and controversial public figure, born in Trelleck, Monmouthshire. He studied at Cambridge, where he became a fellow of Trinity College in 1895. Concerned to defend the objectivity of mathematics, he pointed out a contradiction in Frege's system, and published his own Principles of Mathematics (1903), which argued that the whole of mathematics could be derived from logic, and the monumental Principia mathematica (with Whitehead, 1910-13), which worked this out in a complete formal system. Russell's famous 'theory of types' and 'theory of descriptions' belong to this same pre-World War 1 period. Politics became his dominant concern during the War, and his active pacifism caused the loss of his Trinity fellowship in 1916 and his imprisonment in 1918, during which he wrote his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919).
He then made his living by lecturing and journalism, and became a celebrated controversialist. He visited the Soviet Union, where he met Lenin, Trotsky, and Gorky; he also taught in Beijing (1920-1). In 1927, with his second wife, Dora, he founded and ran a progressive school near Petersfield. In 1931 he succeeded his elder brother as 3rd Earl Russell. His second divorce (1934) and re-marriage (1936) helped to make controversial his book Marriage and Morals (1932); and his lectureship at City College, New York was terminated in 1940 after complaints that he was an 'enemy of religion and morality'. The rise of fascism led him to renounce his pacifism in 1939; his fellowship at Trinity was restored in 1944, and he returned to England after World War 2 to be honoured with an Order of Merit, and to give the first BBC Reith Lectures in 1949. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.
He had meanwhile continued publishing important philosophical work, mainly in epistemology, and in 1945 published the best-selling History of Western Philosophy. He also wrote a stream of provocative, popular works on social, moral, and religious questions, such as Why I am not a Christian (1957). After 1949 he became a leading figure in the cause of nuclear disarmament, and in 1961 was again imprisoned after a demonstration in Whitehall. The last major publications were his three volumes of Autobiography (1967-9).
|