Bertrand Russell - Bury Place, London, UK
N 51° 31.098 W 000° 07.448
30U E 699523 N 5711385
This blue plaque is fitted to a red brick building on the east side of Bury Place at the junction with Galen Place.
Waymark Code: WMDHE3
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 01/17/2012
Views: 2
The blue plaque, that is in good condition, reads:
On the edge:
"English Heritage"
In the centre:
"Bertrand / Russell / 1872 - 1970 / Philosopher and / Campaigner for Peace /
lived here / in flat No. 34 / 1911 - 1916".
"Bertrand Arthur William Russell was born at Trelleck
on 18th May, 1872. His parents were Viscount Amberley and Katherine, daughter of
2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley. At the age of three he was left an orphan. His
father had wished him to be brought up as an agnostic; to avoid this he was made
a ward of Court, and brought up by his grandmother. Instead of being sent to
school he was taught by governesses and tutors, and thus acquired a perfect
knowledge of French and German. In 1890 he went into residence at Trinity
College, Cambridge, and after being a very high Wrangler and obtaining a First
Class with distinction in philosophy he was elected a fellow of his college in
1895. But he had already left Cambridge in the summer of 1894 and for some
months was attaché at the British embassy at Paris.
In December 1894 he married Miss Alys Pearsall Smith. After spending some months
in Berlin studying social democracy, they went to live near Haslemere, where he
devoted his time to the study of philosophy. In 1900 he visited the Mathematical
Congress at Paris. He was impressed with the ability of the Italian
mathematician Peano and his pupils, and immediately studied Peano's works. In
1903 he wrote his first important book, The Principles of Mathematics, and with
his friend Dr. Alfred Whitehead proceeded to develop and extend the mathematical
logic of Peano and Frege. From time to time he abandoned philosophy for
politics. In 1910 he was appointed lecturer at Trinity College. After the first
World War broke out, he took an active part in the No Conscription fellowship
and was fined £ 100 as the author of a leaflet criticizing a sentence of two
years on a conscientious objector. His college deprived him of his lectureship
in 1916. He was offered a post at Harvard university, but was refused a
passport. He intended to give a course of lectures (afterwards published in
America as Political Ideals, 1918) but was prevented by the military
authorities. In 1918 he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for a
pacifistic article he had written in the Tribunal. His Introduction to
Mathematical Philosophy (1919) was written in prison. His Analysis of Mind
(1921) was the outcome of some lectures he gave in London, which were organized
by a few friends who got up a subscription for the purpose.
In 1920 Russell had paid a short visit to Russia to study the conditions of
Bolshevism on the spot. In the autumn of the same year he went to China to
lecture on philosophy at the Peking university. On his return in Sept. 1921,
having been divorced by his first wife, he married Miss Dora Black. They lived
for six years in Chelsea during the winter months and spent the summers near
Lands End. In 1927 he and his wife started a school for young children, which
they carried on until 1932. He succeeded to the earldom in 1931. He was divorced
by his second wife in 1935 and the following year married Patricia Helen Spence.
In 1938 he went to the United States and during the next years taught at many of
the country's leading universities. In 1940 he was involved in legal proceedings
when his right to teach philosophy at the College of the City of New York was
questioned because of his views on morality. When his appointment to the college
faculty was cancelled, he accepted a five-year contract as a lecturer for the
Barnes foundation, Merion, Pa., but the cancellation of this contract was
announced in Jan. 1943 by Albert C. Barnes, director of the foundation.
Russell was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1908, and re-elected a
fellow of Trinity College in 1944. He was awarded the Sylvester medal of the
Royal Society, 1934, the de Morgan medal of the London Mathematical Society in
the same year, the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1950."
Source
Nobel Prize website.