Bertrand Arthur William Russell,
3rd Earl Russell (1872 – 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, and social
critic.
As an academic, he worked in
philosophy, mathematics, and logic.
His work has had a considerable
influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial
intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, and various areas of
analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of
language, epistemology, and metaphysics.
He was a public intellectual,
historian, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate.
He was born in Monmouthshire into one of the
most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom.
Russell was one of the early
20th century's most prominent logicians and one of the founders of analytic
philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague
G. E. Moore and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore
led the British "revolt against idealism".
Together with his former teacher
A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the
development of classical logic, and a major attempt to reduce the whole of
mathematics to logic (see Logicism). Russell's article "On Denoting"
has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy".
Russell was a pacifist who
championed anti-imperialism and chaired the India League. He occasionally
advocated preventive nuclear war, before the opportunity provided by the atomic
monopoly had passed and he decided he would "welcome with enthusiasm"
world government.
He went to prison for his
pacifism during World War I.
Later, Russell concluded that the war against
Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany was a necessary "lesser of two evils" and
also criticized Stalinist totalitarianism, condemned the United States' war on
Vietnam and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament.
In 1950, Russell was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant
writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of
thought". He was also the recipient of the De Morgan Medal (1932),
Sylvester Medal (1934), Kalinga Prize (1957), and Jerusalem Prize (1963).