Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
Born 1889 CE, died 1951 CE.
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( VIT-gən-s(h)tyne; Austrian German: [ˈluːdvɪk ˈjoːsɛf ˈjoːhan ˈvɪtɡn̩ʃtaɪn]; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austro-British philosopher who worked in logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. Wittgenstein was born in Vienna into one of Europe's richest families. From 1911 to 1913, he studied at the University of Cambridge under Bertrand Russell and interacted closely with John Maynard Keynes and G. E. Moore, among others. During this time, he inherited a fortune, part of which he donated to various poets and artists. He also began what would become his first important philosophical work. However, at the start of World War I, he left academia to enlist in the Austro-Hungarian Army. After a series of personal adversities—including the death of his older brother by suicide (the third of his older brothers to die by suicide during his lifetime), the death of his close friend and lover David Pinsent, and his imprisonment in an Italian prisoner of war camp—he became depressed, and he gave away his remaining fortune to his siblings. He worked as a schoolteacher around Vienna.
Text from the Wikipedia article Ludwig_Wittgenstein, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.