Frank Plumpton Ramsey (/?ramzi/; 22 February 1903 ? 19 January 1930) was a British philosopher, mathematician and economist who made fundamental contributions to abstract algebra before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein and was instrumental(楽器・役立つ) in translating Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (『論理哲学論考』or『論考』1921) into English, as well as persuading Wittgenstein to return to philosophy and Cambridge. Like Wittgenstein, he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the intellectual secret society, from 1921.
Life
Ramsey was born on 22 February 1903 in Cambridge where his father Arthur Stanley Ramsey (1867?1954), also a mathematician, was President of Magdalene College. His mother was Mary Agnes Stanley (1875?1927). He was the eldest of two brothers and two sisters, and his brother Michael Ramsey, the only one of the four siblings who was to remain Christian, later became Archbishop of Canterbury. He entered Winchester College in 1915 and later returned to Cambridge to study mathematics at Trinity College. While studying mathematics at Trinity College, Ramsey became a student to John Maynard Keynes, and an active member in the Apostles, a Cambridge discussion group. In 1923, he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics, passing his examinations with the result of first class with distinction. He was named Senior Wrangler.[2] Easy-going, simple and modest, Ramsey had many interests besides his scientific work. Even as a teenager Ramsey exhibited both a profound ability and, as attested by his brother, an extremely diverse range of interests:
He was interested in almost everything. He was immensely widely read in English literature; he was enjoying classics though he was on the verge of plunging into being a mathematical specialist; he was very interested in politics, and well-informed; he had got a political concern and a sort of left-wing caring-for-the-underdog kind of outlook about politics.
??Michael Ramsey, Quoted in Mellor
In 1923, Ramsey was befriended by Geoffrey and Margaret Pyke, then on the point of founding the Malting House School in Cambridge; the Pykes took Ramsey into their family, taking him on holiday and asking him to be the godfather of their young son. Margaret found herself to be the object of his affection, Ramsey recording in his diary:
One afternoon I went out alone with her on Lake Orta and became filled with desire and we came back and lay on two beds side by side she reading, I pretending to, but with an awful conflict in my mind. After about an hour I said (she was wearing her horn spectacles and looking superlatively beautiful in the Burne Jones style) ‘Margaret will you fuck with me?’[3]
