Gottlob Frege

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Gottlob Frege bigraphy, stories - Important German logician and philosopher

Gottlob Frege : biography

8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege ( 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on the philosophy of language and mathematics. While he was mainly ignored by the intellectual world when he published his writings, Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) introduced his work to later generations of logicians and philosophers.

Life

Childhood (1848–69)

Frege was born in 1848 in Wismar, in the state of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (the modern German federal state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). His father Carl (Karl) Alexander Frege (3 August 1809 – 30 November 1866) was the co-founder and headmaster of a girls’ high school until his death. After Carl’s death, the school was led by Frege’s mother Auguste Wilhelmine Sophie Frege (née Bialloblotzky of Polish descent, 12 January 1815 – 14 October 1898).

In childhood, Frege encountered philosophies that would guide his future scientific career. For example, his father wrote a textbook on the German language for children aged 9–13, entitled Hülfsbuch zum Unterrichte in der deutschen Sprache für Kinder von 9 bis 13 Jahren (2nd ed., Wismar 1850; 3rd ed., Wismar and Ludwigslust: Hinstorff, 1862), the first section of which dealt with the structure and logic of language.

Frege studied at a gymnasium in Wismar and graduated in 1869. His teacher Gustav Adolf Leo Sachse (5 November 1843 – 1 September 1909), who was a poet, played the most important role in determining Frege’s future scientific career, encouraging him to continue his studies at the University of Jena.

Studies at University: Jena and Göttingen (1869–74)

Frege matriculated at the University of Jena in the spring of 1869 as a citizen of the North German Confederation. In the four semesters of his studies he attended approximately twenty courses of lectures, most of them on mathematics and physics. His most important teacher was Ernst Karl Abbe (1840–1905) (physicist, mathematician, and inventor). Abbe gave lectures on theory of gravity, galvanism and electrodynamics, complex analysis theory of functions of a complex variable, applications of physics, selected divisions of mechanics, and mechanics of solids. Abbe was more than a teacher to Frege: he was a trusted friend, and, as director of the optical manufacturer Carl Zeiss AG, he was in a position to advance Frege’s career. After Frege’s graduation, they came into closer correspondence.

His other notable university teachers were Christian Philipp Karl Snell (1806–86; subjects: use of infinitesimal analysis in geometry, analytical geometry of planes, analytical mechanics, optics, physical foundations of mechanics); Hermann Karl Julius Traugott Schaeffer (1824–1900; analytical geometry, applied physics, algebraic analysis, on the telegraph and other electronic machines); and the famous philosopher Kuno Fischer (1824–1907; Kantian and critical philosophy).

Starting in 1871, Frege continued his studies in Göttingen, the leading university in mathematics in German-speaking territories, where he attended the lectures of Rudolf Friedrich Alfred Clebsch (1833–72; analytical geometry), Ernst Christian Julius Schering (1824–97; function theory), Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804–91); physical studies, applied physics, Eduard Riecke (1845–1915; theory of electricity, and Hermann Lotze (1817–81; philosophy of religion). Many of the philosophical doctrines of the mature Frege have parallels in Lotze; it has been the subject of scholarly debate whether or not there was a direct influence on Frege’s views arising from his attending Lotze’s lectures.

In 1873, Frege attained his doctorate under Ernst Christian Julius Schering, with a dissertation under the title of "Über eine geometrische Darstellung der imaginären Gebilde in der Ebene" ("On a Geometrical Representation of Imaginary Forms in a Plane"), in which he aimed to solve such fundamental problems in geometry as the mathematical interpretation of projective geometry’s infinitely distant (imaginary) points.