Frank P. Ramsey

Frank Plumpton Ramsey (22 February 1903 – 19 January 1930) was a British philosopher, mathematician, and economist who made major contributions to all three fields before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein and, as an undergraduate, translated Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into English. He was also influential in persuading Wittgenstein to return to philosophy and Cambridge. Like Wittgenstein, he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the secret intellectual society, from 1921. Ramsey was born in Cambridge, the son of Arthur Stanley Ramsey, a mathematician and President of Magdalene College. He studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a student of John Maynard Keynes. He graduated with a first-class degree and was named Senior Wrangler. Ramsey's philosophical work included a redundancy theory of truth and an influential version of the subjective interpretation of probability. In economics, he developed groundbreaking papers on optimal taxation and optimal growth. His theorem in mathematical logic now bears his name, and it led to the development of Ramsey theory. Ramsey died at the age of 26 due to complications following an abdominal operation.