1903-1930

English mathematician best known for his criticisms of Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica. Ramsey showed how to eliminate the axiom of reducibility, which they had introduced to deal with paradoxes arising from their theory of types. Ramsey also published two studies in economics, the last of which John Maynard Keynes described as "one of the most remarkable contributions to mathematical economics ever made." Ramsey's contributions to philosophy were small but significant, including work on universals and scientific theories.