SOURCE: “Alfred North Whitehead,” in Portraits From Memory, and Other Essays, Simon and Schuster, 1956, pp. 99-104.

In the following essay, Russell, co-author with Whitehead of the Principia Mathematica, offers a personal remembrance of his colleague.

My first contact with Whitehead, or rather with his father, was in 1877. I had been told that the earth is round, but trusting to the evidence of the senses, I refused to believe it. The vicar of the parish, who happened to be Whitehead's father, was called in to persuade me. Clerical authority so far prevailed as to make me think an experimental test worth while, and I started to dig a hole in the hopes of emerging at the antipodes. When they told me this was useless, my doubts revived.

I had no further contact with Whitehead until the year 1890 when as a freshman at Cambridge, I attended his lectures on statics...