Who was Bertrand Russell?
Bertrand Russell was primarily a philosopher and mathematician, but he also had many other interests as a historian, writer, social critic, and political activist.
In the fields of mathematics and logic, Russell is probably best known for two major accomplishments. The first is something he discovered in 1901 that became known as Russell's Paradox:
Suppose R is defined to be the set of all sets that do not contain themselves.
Question: Is R an element of R?
Another major accomplishment in mathematics was the publishing of Principia Mathematica. This massive three-volume book was written in the years 1910 to 1913 in collaboration with his mentor Alfred North Whitehead. It is one of the most significant books written in the 20th century. Its purpose was to place mathematics on a solid logical foundation. It inadvertently lead to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem and then to the Turing Machine.
After completing Principia Mathematica, Russell felt burned out, and decided that he would spend more time on his other interests rather than mathematics.
In 1950, Bertrand Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Version 1.0 -- April 23, 2017