Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian-born philosopher who worked chiefly on logic, language, and the limits of meaning. Raised in a wealthy, culturally prominent Viennese family, he studied engineering before turning to the foundations of logic under Bertrand Russell at Cambridge. His 1921 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus argued that the structure of language mirrors the structure of the world; he later repudiated much of it. His posthumous Philosophical Investigations (1953) reframed meaning as arising from "language-games"—the everyday practices in which words are used. He served in the First World War, taught in Austrian village schools, and returned to Cambridge, where he held a professorship and died.