Bertrand Russell

Figure P.2: Bertrand Russell, 1958.

Bertrand Russell was born in 1872 into a family of the British aristocracy. His early life was colored with tragedy: by the time he was six years old, he had lost his mother, sister, father, and grandfather. He was a deeply pensive child naturally inclined towards philosophical topics, and by 1883 -- at the age of 11 -- he was set upon the path for the first half of his life. It was at this time that his brother was tutoring him on Euclid's geometry:

"This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined that there was anything so delicious in the world. After I had learned the fifth proposition, my brother told me that it was generally considered difficult, but I had found no difficulty whatever. This was the first time it had dawned upon me that I might have some intelligence. From that moment until Whitehead and I finished Principia ... mathematics was my chief interest, and my chief source of happiness."1

Russell continues in his biography, sharing how this time also provided the initial impetus toward the Principia Mathematica:

"I had been told that Euclid proved things, and was much disappointed that he started with axioms. At first I refused to accept them unless my brother could offer me some reason for doing so, but he said: 'If you don't accept them we cannot go on', and as I wished to go on, I reluctantly admitted them pro tem. The doubt as to the premisses of mathematics which I felt at that moment remained with me, and determined the course of my subsequent work."

In 1900, Russell attended the First International Conference of Philosophy where he had been invited to read a paper. In his autobiography, he describes this fateful event:

Russell sent an early edition of the Principia to Peano after working on it for three years. A biographer of Peano noted that he "immediately recognized it's value ... and wrote that the book 'marks an epoch in the field of philosophy of mathematics.'" 3 Over the course of remaining decade, Russell and Whitehead continued to collaborate on the Principia, a work that ultimately inspired Gödel's incompleteness theorems and Church's $$\lambda$$-calculus.

1

The 1998 reissued hardback "Autobiography" of Bertrand Russell, pages 30 and 31.

2

Ibid., page 147.

3

Kennedy, page 105-106.