Alfred North Whitehead Biography
(Mathematician, Philosopher)
Birthday: February 15, 1861 (Aquarius)
Born In: Ramsgate, Kent, England
Alfred North Whitehead was a British Mathematician who is known for his tremendous contributions in algebra, logic, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education. Although Whitehead was a scientist whose areas of expertise were mathematics and physics, yet his outlook towards these subjects were philosophical than purely scientific. Starting his career as a Fellow and then as a lecturer in mathematics at Trinity College Cambridge, he later diversified into philosophy and metaphysics. As a lecturer at Trinity, he coauthored with Bertrand Russell the three volumes of the ‘Principia Mathematica’, today known as one of the most important works in mathematical logic. Thereafter, as he settled in London, teaching at the Imperial College, his attention was gradually turned to philosophy of science, which in its turn led him to metaphysics, a subject that deals with the philosophical investigation into the nature of the universe and existence. Whitehead spent the last years of his career at Harvard, writing his seminal work, ‘Process’ and Reality’ in the late 1920s. Realistic, helpful, courteous, and devoid of malice, he was equally popular with his colleagues and students.