Alfred North Whitehead, who lived from 1861 to 1947, is chiefly remembered in England as Bertrand Russell's collaborator in the three volumes of Principia Mathematica. He was, however, not only a professional mathematician - which Russell ceased to be after coming out joint seventh Wrangler in the first part of the Cambridge Tripos in 1893 - but a philosopher in his own right. It was as a philosopher that he was invited to occupy a Chair at Harvard in 1924, after retiring from the Chair of Applied Mathematics at the Imperial College of Science in the University of London. He retained his professorship at Harvard until 1937 and continued to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts until his death. His association with the English Cambridge lasted from 1880, when he came up to Trinity as a mathematical scholar from Sherborne, until 1910, when he resigned the Fellowship at Trinity which he had held for 26 years.

LRB 20 June 1985 | PDF Download