Alfred North Whitehead Biography

Alfred North Whitehead was a mathematician and philosopher whose work in the early 20th century was a major influence on both fields.

Whitehead began teaching mathematics in 1884 at Trinity College in Cambridge, England. Between 1910 and 1913 he published the three-volume work Principia Mathematica with his former student, Bertrand Russell, an attempt to define the logical foundation of science and mathematics.

Whitehead taught in England until 1924, when he moved to the United States to accept a chair in philosophy from Harvard University. He had never even taken a philosophy course, but Whitehead taught there and stayed until his death in 1947.

In 1929 he published Process and Reality, and spent the rest of his life writing and lecturing on what is called process theology.