Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgensteins life was marked by the same pervasive sense of conflict that characterizes his work. He was born in 1889 into the family of a wealthy Viennese industrialist but gave the bulk of his inheritance away. Although he had studied at Cambridge with Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein enlisted as an Austrian patriot on the opposite side of the war from England; it is both incredible and appropriate that he was able to complete the Tractatus, his theory of logic, during active combat duty.