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Bertrand russell

Bertrand Russell was a Nobel Prize winner and also a famous British Philosopher and Mathematician,who enjoyed a long career as a teacher and a writer.

Bertrand Russell was born in Trelleck, Wales in 1872.He was the second saon of Viscount Amberley.While he was just three, his parents died and his grandfather, Lord John Russell, who had been the Prime Minister twice,brought up Russell.He was never sent to school and instead, was taught by tutors and governesses. He soon acquired a through knowledge of French and German. He was deeply interested in Philosophy and brilliant at Mathematics.He loved to read and spent a lot of time in his grandfather's library. When he was 14, he aslo started getting interested in Theology-the study of religion.But in the years that followed, he rejected the idea of immortality and belief in God.

In 1890,he enrolled at the Trinity College in Cambridge,where his genius was soon recongnized. It was here that he started to read modern writers of the early 1890s-Ibsen, Shaw, Flauber, Walt Whitman, and Nietzsche.At the end of his course, he obtained the first class with a distinction in Philosophy.

In 1894,he left Cambridge to Work at the British embassy at Paris. The same summer,he married an American, Alys Pearsall Smith, against his family's wishes. The couple spent a few months in Berlin, where Russell studied Social Democracy and Economics and gathered material for the first of his several books. They soon moved to aplace near Haslemere, where he spent a lot of time in the study of Philosophy.

In 1900 he visited the Mathematical Congress at Paris. He was greatly influenced by the Italin Mathematician Peano and his students and began a study of his work. Three years later, in 1903, he wrote his first and most important book, "The Principles of Mathematics". Its amin proposition was that the foundations of mathematics could be deduced from a few logical ideas. In other words, mathematics was a continuation of logic.

In 1907, Russell stood for parliament as a candidate for the Womenn's Suffragette Society,but lost.The  next year he became a fellow of the Royal Society. Believing that it was immoral to inherit wealth, he gave away most of his money to his university.

In 1910, he became a lecturer at Trinity College. Though he was later offered a job at Harvard Universuty, he was refused a passport.He alos went to prison for 6 months for writing an article criticizing the war. His famous book-Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, was written in prison.

In 1920, Russell travelled to Russia and met Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, but returned disappointed.He soon published his criticism of them in the article "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism". He later travelled around and taugght Philosophy at Peking for a year.In 1921, following a series of lectures in London, he wrote the "Analysis of Mind". The same year, now divorced from his first wife,he married again.In 1927, he and his new wife started a school for young children at Beacon Hill.

In 1931, after his elder brother's death, he was made Earl. In 4 years he was divorced again and married for the third time. He went to the United States and spent the next few years teaching at some of the most famous universities there including the University of Chicago, the University of California at Los Angeles and the College of the City of New York.Here he wrote one of his most popular works, "History of Western Philosophy".

In 1944, Russell was elected as a Fellow of Trinity College. Earlier he had been awarded the Sylvester medal of the Royal Society and the de Morgan medal of the London Mathematical Society as well.He also received the Order of Merit.

In 1950, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his varied and significant writings, where he emphasized compassion and freedom of thought.In 1961, Rusell found himself in prison yet again, following a protest in Whitehall. Russell spent his last years in North Wales.During this time he wrote "Human Knowledge:"Its Scope and Limits", "Satan in the Suburb", "Nightmares of Eminent Persons" and "The Autobiograohy of Bertrand Russell".

On February 2, 1970, Russell died of influenza. When asked what he would say to God if he found himself before him, Russell answered that he would scold him for not providing enough evidence of his existence. Even after his death, his influence remained as the voice raised against nuclear weapons.

This article is very useful to Literature students.

 

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