Bertrand Russell Born: Philosopher, Pacifist, Nobel Laureate

Bertrand Russell 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. Born on May 18, 1872, in Trellech, Wales, he was orphaned by the age of three and raised by his grandmother, a formidable Victorian figure who instilled in him a moral seriousness that never quite reconciled with his personal life. He graduated from Cambridge in mathematics, where he came under the influence of Alfred North Whitehead, and the two spent ten years writing "Principia Mathematica," a monumental attempt to derive all of mathematics from logical axioms. The work, published in three volumes between 1910 and 1913, is one of the most important texts in the history of logic and the philosophy of mathematics. Russell's interests ranged far beyond technical philosophy. He was a passionate opponent of war, imprisoned for six months in 1918 for his pacifist writings during World War I. He wrote prolifically on education, marriage, religion, politics, and social reform. "A History of Western Philosophy," published in 1945, was a bestseller and provided the financial security that his academic career had not. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950, recognized for his "varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought." He was married four times. His personal life involved a complexity of romantic relationships that would have been scandalous even by the standards of his progressive circle. In his 80s and 90s, he became one of the most prominent voices in the nuclear disarmament movement, founding the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and participating in sit-down protests outside the Ministry of Defence. He was arrested at age 89. He died on February 2, 1970, at age 97.