PRINCIPLES OF MATHEMATICS, THE

If it weren't for his outspokenness on points of social and political justice, Earl Bertrand Arthur William Russell would be known only within philosophical circles. But as fate had it, he would inspire the world first with logic, then with opinion. Russell graduated from Trinity College at the age of 18 with a B.A. in mathematics. His academic work then turned to logic, and in 1903 he published THE PRINCIPLES OF MATHEMATICS, which won him high regard. After publishing several academic texts, Russell became actively--vocally--involved in politics. He was dismissed from Trinity College for participating in demonstrations, and his lecturing and professorial appointments in the United States were heavily protested. When his marketability as an academic waned because of his political activities, Russell turned to journalism to earn a living; he wrote on a wide range of topics, such as morality, nuclear war, and religion. In 1950 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature for his efforts. Among Russell's other adventures were an experimental school, which he founded with his second wife Dora, and his Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Russell's active intellectual life kept him busy even as an octogenarian, when he was jailed for participating in anti-nuclear demonstrations, but could not compensate for what many biographers consider his gravest problem: his complex personal and family life.