Bertrand Russell

Russell, Bertrand (1872–1970), British philosopher, mathematician, and man of letters. Initially a subscriber of idealism he broke away in 1898 and eventually became an empiricist. His most important work was relating logic and mathematics. Russell endeavored to reduce all mathematics to logical principles. His results appeared in The Principles of Mathematics (1903) and, in collaboration with A.N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (3 vols., 1910–13). This work particularly influenced mathematics' set theory, logical positivism, and 20th-century, symbolic logic. Russell was a vehement pacifist for much of his life, especially during World War I and after, in the “ban the bomb” movement, and in his active opposition in Europe to U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s. His views twice earned him prison sentences (1918, 1961): during the former he wrote his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919). His other works include Marriage and Morals (1929), Education and the Social Order (1932), An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), History of Western Philosophy (1945), and popularizations such as The ABC of Relativity (1925), as well as his Autobiography (3 vols., 1967–69). He received the 1950 Nobel Prize for literature and founded the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.