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English mathematician and philosopher who held advanced liberal social views for his days. He campaigned for women's
suffrage and education. Russell won the Nobel Prize in literature. He was also an outstanding mathematician. He
believed that math is indistinguishable from logic  and founded the logicist school of mathematical thought.
With Whitehead, he tried to invent a system of logic on which mathematics could be based. The result was a book
entitled Principia Mathematica (3 volumes, 1910-1913). Gödel, however, later showed that such
efforts were doomed since any rigid logical system contains undecidable propositions.
Russell is also known for the letter he sent to Frege, who was just completing his epic work on the foundations
of mathematics. Russell posed the paradox: is "the set of all sets which are not members of themselves" a member of
itself? This conundrum, known as Russell's paradox showed that Frege's work must not be logically consistent,
and sent it crumbling.
Additional biographies: MacTutor (St. Andrews)
--. "Bertrand Russell Archives." http://www.mcmaster.ca/russdocs/russell.htm.
Clark, R. W. The Life of Bertrand Russell. New York: Knopf, 1976.
Russell, B.
A History of Western Philosophy, and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945.
Russell, B. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. New York: Dover, 1993.
Whitehead, A. N. and Russell, B. Principia Mathematica, 2nd ed. London: Cambridge University Press, 1925.
© 1996-2007 Eric W. Weisstein
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