Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872 - 1970)

Russell was born into the Whig aristocracy and inherited many of the values of its most radical wing. His grandfather, a prominent Whig reformer of the 1830s, had twice been prime minister. Russell was orphaned before he was 4 and was brought up by his grandmother who had him educated at home. In 1890 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, to study mathematics. He gained a first in mathematics in 1893 and then turned to philosophy for his fourth year.

In 1894 he married Alys Pearsall Smith and spent part of his honeymoon in Berlin working on his first book, German Social Democracy (1896). The following year he published An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, a revised version of his dissertation for which he had been awarded a six-year fellowship at Trinity. This was the first of a projected series of books on the sciences. After some aborted work on physics, he turned to pure mathematics and logic, producing many of his most important contributions in the period to 1913. While doing so, he lived mainly off unearned income, but in 1910, his capital depleted, he took up a lectureship at Trinity where he taught until 1916.

Though Russell had been born with an interest in politics, it had not hitherto occupied much of his time (despite his study of the German Marxists and vigorous interventions on behalf of free trade and women's suffrage). With the outbreak of war in 1914, however, his interest in philosophy lessened and he threw himself into writing, speaking and organizing on behalf of the pacifists. A conviction under the Defence of the Realm Act led to his dismissal from Trinity in 1916; a further conviction led to his being jailed in 1918. After 1916 he had only relatively short periods of academic employment and was dependent upon writing to make his living – a fact which only partially explains his huge subsequent output.

After the war he visited Russia to see the work of the Bolshevik government, but was disillusioned with its authoritarianism. In 1920–1 he spent a year at the University of Peking (Beijing). Returning to England he married Dora Black in 1921, just in time to legitimize his son; a daughter was born in 1923. Parenthood led him to take an interest in education and with his wife he started an experimental school. It was not, in Russell's eyes, a success, and it was very expensive to run, requiring that he undertake regular lecture tours of the USA to raise money. His involvement with it ended, along with his marriage, in 1932, though Dora continued to run it on her own until 1943.

Through the 1920s and early 1930s Russell wrote prolifically on an astonishing range of topics, producing (among much else) books on Russia, China, relativity, history, education, sexual morality, international relations, religion and the future of society. Though much of this activity was necessary to make ends meet, Russell was a tireless advocate of progressive causes. By the mid-1930s, however, tiring of the precariousness of this way of life and needing now to support two families (he had remarried in 1936 and a third child was born in 1937), he hoped to return to academic life. This was not easy: positions were scarce and Russell was a controversial figure. In 1938 he lectured at Oxford, followed by visiting appointments at Chicago and UCLA and finally an offer of a permanent position at City College, New York. This last, however, provoked opposition from New York's Catholic community and the appointment was overturned in a celebrated court case.

In 1940, therefore, Russell found himself unemployed and marooned in America by the war. At this point, the eccentric millionaire Albert Barnes came to his rescue with a five-year appointment to lecture on the history of philosophy at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Although Barnes fired Russell at the end of 1942, he permanently solved Russell's financial problems, for not only did Russell collect a sizeable sum for breach of contract but the lectures he gave for Barnes became the basis for his hugely successful History of Western Philosophy (1945).

Russell returned to England in 1944 to take up a fellowship at Trinity College, where he completed his last great philosophical work, Human Knowledge (1948). His return marked not only a mending of his relations with Trinity but also with the British establishment. His continued condemnation of communism in general and the Soviet government in particular was well suited to the beginnings of the cold war and Russell enjoyed a period of unaccustomed respectability. Throughout the 1950s he continued to write prolifically, including a philosophical autobiography, My Philosophical Development (1959). He married for a fourth time in 1952.

His respectability was short-lived. After the death of Stalin his hatred of the Soviet government moderated, and the threat of nuclear war came to dominate his thoughts. He wrote extensively on the danger of war during the 1950s but increasingly felt the need for action and in 1958 helped found the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and then the more militant Committee of 100. In 1961 he was jailed once more for inciting demonstrators to civil disobedience. The 1960s were a time of hectic political work for Russell. He lent support to many causes and was especially active in opposing the Vietnam War. His last political statement, on the Middle East, was written two days before his death.