page_title: Philip Jourdain
hierarchical_section_title: Philip Jourdain
caption_attribution_description: Català: Philip Jourdain (1879-1919), British mathematician and logician
context_page_description: Philip Edward Bertrand Jourdain was a British logician and follower of Bertrand Russell.
  He was born in Ashbourne in Derbyshire one of a large family belonging to Emily Clay and his father Francis Jourdain. He was partly disabled by Friedreich's ataxia. He corresponded with Georg Cantor and Gottlob Frege, and took a close interest in the paradoxes related to Russell's paradox, formulating the card paradox version of the liar paradox. He corresponded with Ludwig Wittgenstein, meeting with him in Cambridge to discuss Frege's book Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, of parts of which Jourdain had prepared a translation. He also worked on algebraic logic, and the history of science with Isaac Newton as a particular study. He was London editor for The Monist. Near the end of his life he became increasingly obsessed by trying to prove the axiom of choice, and published several incorrect proofs of it. Littlewood describes Jourdain on his deathbed still arguing with him about his proof of the axiom of choice.
  His sister Eleanor Jourdain was an English academic and author.
context_section_description: Philip Edward Bertrand Jourdain (16 October 1879 – 1 October 1919) was a British logician and follower of Bertrand Russell.
  He was born in Ashbourne in Derbyshire one of a large family belonging to Emily Clay and his father  Francis Jourdain (who was the vicar at Ashbourne). He was partly disabled by Friedreich's ataxia. He corresponded with Georg Cantor and Gottlob Frege, and took a close interest in the paradoxes related to Russell's paradox, formulating the card paradox version of the liar paradox. He corresponded with Ludwig Wittgenstein, meeting with him in Cambridge to discuss Frege's book Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, of parts of which Jourdain had prepared a translation. He also worked on algebraic logic, and the history of science with Isaac Newton as a particular study. He was London editor for The Monist. Near the end of his life he became increasingly obsessed by trying to prove the axiom of choice, and published several incorrect proofs of it. Littlewood (1986, p.129) describes Jourdain on his deathbed still arguing with him about his (incorrect) proof of the axiom of choice. 
  His sister Eleanor Jourdain was an English academic and author. Another sister, Margaret (1876-1951), was an authority on the history of fine English home-furnishings, and the life-long companion of the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett.
caption: Drawing by her sister Millicent (1909)
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