ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
Born: February 15, 1861 on the Isle of Thanet, England
Died: December 30, 1947 in Cambridge, Mass, USA
Alfred North Whitehead was born on the Isle of Thanet, England. His
father was an Anglican clergyman. Alfred was the youngest of four
children. Whitehead was not sent to elementary school because his
parents thought that he was too delicate in health. His parents
considered him as a sickly child, which was not true. He was taught at
home His father taught Latin and Greek. At this time there was no
signs of the genius that he showed in his later life. He did learn
arithmetic while he was home. How he developed an interest in the
subject of mathematics is the subject of debate.
In September 1875 he left his father’s tutoring and entered the
Sherborne Independent school .at the age of fourteen.The courses he
took at the school consisted of Latin, Greek, English, history, and
mathematics. Whitehead showed a special gift for mathematics and the
school gave him extra time to devote to the subject.
In 1859 Whitehead took the entrance examination for Trinity College
in Cambridge and he won a scholarship. Whitehead lived on the
campus. His private professor was E.J. Routh. He placed first in his
class in mathematics. His doctorate was on the theory of electricity and
magnetism. He won a fellowship for this paper. Whitehead was
appointed as an assist lecturer He did not publish any papers during
his five years at the university. He was considered a loner and he did
not talk too much with his fellow mathematicians. In the twelve years
that he was at trinity he only published two articles .Despite his poor
publication record , Whitehead was given a full lectureship at Trinity.
When he got married a rather remarkable change came upon him.he
became interested in pure mathematics. He started to work on a ook
on algebra which took him seven years to complete. Another change he
under went was he became an agnostic. He left the Anglican

Church.When he was teaching at Trinity, Betrand Russell was one of
his prize students. At a later date he coloborated with Russell with the
writing of the text Principia Mathematica which was published in 1910
This text was a monumental break through in mathematics. It
approached the subject in a logical view- point. The Principia consists
of three volumes.The Principia introduces many of the symbols that
are used in symbolic logic and set theory.
Some examples:
The negation of a statement is given as ~P
P,Q,and R are propositional letters
The symbol for epslon is
Whitehead was contacted by Harvard university in 1924 and accepted
the chair of philosophy He taught at Harvard until his retirement in
1937. He died on December 30, 1947 in Cambridge, Mass.
Quotes of Alfred North Whitehead:
“Seek simplicity, but distrust it”
“Every really new idea looks crazy at first”