April 26th is the birthday of well-known philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, (Vienna 1889).
He was described by his mentor Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have known of genius as traditionally conceived: passionate, profound, intense, and dominating." He was the youngest of nine children; three of his brothers committed suicide.
In 1908, before he met Russell, Wittgenstein began studying aeronautical engineering at Manchester University. He moved to Cambridge in 1911 and that got him connected with the philosophy crowd there, headed by Bertie.
Wittgenstein was born into one of the richest families in Austro-Hungary, but he later gave away his inheritance to his siblings, and also to an assortment of Austrian writers and artists, including Rainer Maria Rilke.
He once said that the study of philosophy rescued him from nine years of loneliness and wanting to die, yet he tried to leave philosophy several times and pursue another line of work, including serving in the army during World War I, working as a porter at a London hospital, and teaching elementary school.
Wittgenstein was particularly interested in language. He wrote, "The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/
Interesting trivia: when it says that his family was rich it means his dad Karl was the Andrew Carnegie of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the end of the 19th century he controlled an effective monopoly on steel and iron.
When the Nazis rose to power, the Wittgenstein family was permitted to whitewash their Jewish origins and become Protestant.
It reminds me of the joke punchline "we needed the eggs."