Bertrand Arthur William Russell Biography

World of Scientific Discovery on Bertrand Arthur William Russell

Russell was born to an aristocratic family that had long been active in British social and political life. His grandfather, John Russell (1792-1878), served twice as Prime Minister of England, and his parents strongly supported most of the progressive reform movements current in nineteenth-century British politics. Both parents died by the time young Russell was four years old, and he was educated at home by tutors under his grandfather's supervision. In 1890 Russell entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied mathematics and philosophy. He was a brilliant student whose teachers included Charles Darwin. Russell's intellect was so potent that within two years of college study he was elected to an informal group of the most illustrious minds of the university called "the Apostles."

In 1910 Russell was appointed to a lectureship in logic and the philosophy of mathematics at Trinity College. During this time, he collaborated with Alfred North Whitehead in the development of a rigorous logical premise upon which the entire system of mathematics and number theory could be based. Other mathematicians had attempted to construct such a system. One, the German Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), abandoned such an effort when Russell himself had demonstrated the existence of a logical paradox in Frege's system in 1902. Between 1910 and 1913, Russell and Whitehead published their three-volume work, Principia Mathematica. The Principia attempted to develop logic itself in an entirely symbolic form from basic axioms.

This logic was then used to develop the fundamental notions of arithmetic from another precise set of axioms in an attempt to generate a consistent logical theory of numbers reminiscent of Euclid's great work, the Elements. Russell and Whitehead's work came close to achieving the type of unified vision many mathematicians had been contemplating for years. However, by the 1930s, Kurt Gödel demonstrated the futility of creating self-consistent formal systems. Gödel's discovery effectively terminated any further work along the lines of Principia Mathematica.

In the tense atmosphere of the years that led up to World War I, Russell's outspoken pacifist views were resented by many of the members of his own aristocratic class. A leaflet published in 1916 in which Russell protested the harsh treatment received by a conscientious objector led to his dismissal from Trinity College. In 1918 Russell was imprisoned for six months for publishing articles that were deemed "seditious. " While serving his sentence, however, he produced important educational works, including Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics. Russell continued to work on problems related to logic and the philosophy of mathematics throughout his long life. He was also active in politics. After World War II, and the cold war that followed, Russell expressed his pacifist views more vehemently than ever. In 1958 he served as president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and in 1961, at age 89, was imprisoned briefly for his pacifist activities. Russell died in Wales in February 1970.