British philosopher Bertrand Russell dies in Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales. Bertrand Russell was a British mathematician and philosopher who, along with A.N. Whitehead, wrote Principia Mathematica in 1903, an important landmark in the development of logic and the philosophy of mathematics.
In this book, Russell and Whitehead demonstrated that mathematics can be expressed with a few terms of general logic and that numbers can be defined as classes. In the process, they also developed concepts that allow symbolic logic to become an important specialization in philosophy.
Russell's concepts raised the hopes among many philosophers that they might eventually be able to achieve the sort of certitude in philosophy which was traditionally the province of the natural sciences.
Russell also became well known for his principled stand on pacifism and his pointed critiques of religion and dogmatic beliefs generally. He was imprisoned and fined, and he lost his teaching post at Cambridge when he condemned both sides during World War I. His critiques of religion and his advocacy of sexual freedom caused him to lose a teaching appointment to the City College of New York.
