Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872â1970) was a British philosopher, logician and mathematician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".
Russell was part philosopher and part mathematician. His biggest mathematical work was a three-volume attempt to derive all principles from a well-defined set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic, entitled Principia Mathematica (1910-1913). He published this work with Alfred North Whitehead.
Unfortunately Russell failed in his effort. Kurt Godel proved in 1931 that what Russell attempted to do is mathematically impossible.
Russell had a major influence on philosophy, particularly in the English-speaking world. He wrote on a variety of subjects including ethics, epistemology, logic, mathematics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and religion. And developed some remarkable ideas including Logical atomism, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, Russell's paradox, and Russell's teapot.