Gottlob Frege

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (/ˈfreɪɡə/;[10] German: [ˈɡɔtloːp ˈfreːɡə]; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic philosophy, concentrating on the philosophy of language, logic, and mathematics. Though he was largely ignored during his lifetime, Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), and, to some extent, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) introduced his work to later generations of philosophers. Frege is widely considered to be the greatest logician since Aristotle, and one of the most profound philosophers of mathematics ever.[11]

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Gottlob Frege
Frege in c. 1879
Born	8 November 1848 Wismar, Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, German Confederation
Died	26 July 1925(1925-07-26) (aged 76) Bad Kleinen, Free State of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, German Reich
Education	University of Göttingen (PhD, 1873) University of Jena (Dr. phil. hab., 1874)
Notable work	Begriffsschrift (1879) The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884) Basic Laws of Arithmetic (1893–1903)
Era	19th-century philosophy 20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy Linguistic turn Logical objectivism Modern Platonism[1] Logicism Transcendental idealism[2][3] (before 1891) Metaphysical realism[3] (after 1891) Foundationalism[4] Indirect realism[5] Redundancy theory of truth[6]
Institutions	University of Jena
Theses	Ueber eine geometrische Darstellung der imaginären Gebilde in der Ebene (On a Geometrical Representation of Imaginary Forms in a Plane) (1873) Rechnungsmethoden, die sich auf eine Erweiterung des Größenbegriffes gründen (Methods of Calculation based on an Extension of the Concept of Magnitude) (1874)
Doctoral advisor	Ernst Christian Julius Schering (PhD thesis advisor)
Other academic advisors	Rudolf Friedrich Alfred Clebsch
Notable students	Rudolf Carnap
Main interests	Philosophy of mathematics, mathematical logic, philosophy of language
Notable ideas	Anti-psychologism principle of compositionality context principle quantification theory predicate calculus Frege's propositional calculus ancestral relation logicism sense and reference Frege's puzzles concept and object sortal Third Realm mediated reference theory (Frege–Russell view) descriptivist theory of names redundancy theory of truth,[6] set-theoretic definition of natural numbers Hume's principle Basic Law V Frege's theorem Frege–Church ontology Frege–Geach problem law of trichotomy technique for binding arguments[7][8] round square copula[9]

His contributions include the development of modern logic in the Begriffsschrift and work in the foundations of mathematics. His book the Foundations of Arithmetic is the seminal text of the logicist project, and is cited by Michael Dummett as where to pinpoint the linguistic turn. His philosophical papers "On Sense and Reference" and "The Thought" are also widely cited. The former argues for two different types of meaning and descriptivism. In Foundations and "The Thought", Frege argues for Platonism against psychologism or formalism, concerning numbers and propositions respectively. Russell's paradox undermined the logicist project by showing Frege's Basic Law V in the Foundations to be false.