Birth of Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 in Trellech. A British philosopher, logician and public intellectual, Russell was one of the founders of analytic philosophy. With Alfred North Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to derive mathematics from logic, and he discovered the paradox in set theory that bears his name. He wrote widely for general readers, including A History of Western Philosophy, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. A lifelong pacifist and social critic, he was jailed during the First World War for his anti-war writings, and later campaigned against nuclear weapons, co-authoring the Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955. He remained active in his nineties.

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