WHITEHEAD, ALFRED NORTH (1861–1947), English mathematician and philosopher, much of whose influence has been on theology. Whitehead grew up in a vicarage in the south of England and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he subsequently became a fellow and taught mathematics. In 1890 he married Evelyn Wade. The couple had three children, Eric, North, and Jessie. After 1914 Whitehead taught mathematics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in Kensington. In 1924, at the age of sixty-three, Whitehead moved to Harvard University, where he taught philosophy until 1936. The death of his son Eric in World War I is reported to have deepened Whitehead's religious interests.

Whitehead did not make any major contribution to mathematics as such. His early writings were chiefly on the philosophy of mathematics (Treatise of Universal Algebra, 1898) and logic (with Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica, 1910–1913). Later he involved himself increasingly in the rethinking of...