Frank Plumpton Ramsey was born in Cambridge, England, in 1903. He was the older son of A. S. Ramsey, a mathematician who later became president of Magdalene College at Cambridge University. Ramsey's younger brother became Archbishop of Canterbury and his two sisters both graduated from universities.

In 1923, he earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge with first class honors. He then traveled briefly to Vienna, and upon his return in 1924 he was appointed a fellow at King's College, Cambridge. Although he never earned a Ph.D., Ramsey was soon promoted to lecturer in mathematics at Cambridge (1926) and was then made director of studies in mathematics at King's College. He held these posts until his untimely death.

Ramsey's contributions in the field of mathematics rest largely on two papers that he published in 1925 and 1928. The first of these dealt with the efforts of Alfred North Whitehead and...