Bertrand Russell Born: Philosopher, Pacifist, Nobel Laureate
He proposed marriage to a woman who turned him down, had a mental breakdown at 20, married someone else, and then wrote some of the most orderly and consequential prose in philosophical history. Bertrand Russell was born in Trellech, Wales, in 1872 and orphaned by three. He graduated from Cambridge in mathematics, co-wrote Principia Mathematica with Alfred North Whitehead, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950, and was still marching against nuclear weapons at 89. He was married four times. His grandmother had censored some of John Stuart Mill's letters so he wouldn't be influenced by them.
May 18, 1872
154 years ago
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