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Hello, on the last day of the year 1900, an ecstatic British academic wrote to a friend,

I invented a new subject which turned out to be all mathematics for the first time treated

in its essence. The academic was Bertrand Russell and he was referring

to the draft of his book The Principles of Mathematics which had just completed. In this work Russell

sought to reduce mathematics to logic and later he was to describe it as the highest

point of his life in his words an intellectual honeymoon such as I've never experienced

before or since. Burton Russell's impact on philosophy was immense and far-reaching.

He was a key founder of analytic philosophy, today the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world.

His theory of descriptions is one the most famous and important ideas in 20th century philosophy,

but his influence extended beyond academia.

His many appearances on the BBC made him a well-known figure and he wrote several books aimed successfully at the general public.

With me to discuss the ideas of life, Bertrand Russell, a Professor A.C. Graling, master of the New College

of the Humanities and a supernumerary Fellow of St. Hans College, Oxford, Mike Beeney, Professor of Philosophy

at the University of York, and Hillary Graves, Lecture in Philosophy and Fellow of Somerville

College, Oxford.

Anthony Greley, Virgin Russell was born in 1872 into an aristocratic family.

Can you give us something of his background and his childhood?

Yes, he was a grandson of Lord John Russell, the man who saw the 1832 reform bill through Parliament,

which was the beginning of partial democratisation of our Parliament.

And his father and mother died when he was very young so he was brought up

...