Tycoon's Son Who Turned Gardener

Despite a wealthy background, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951) preferred to live a simple existence. The son of a steel tycoon, Wittgenstein gave away the fortune he inherited and divided his time between an active academic life and working as a school master, gardener and hospital porter. His book, “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, published in 1921, took as its basic axiom, that “all philosophy is a critique of language” and attempted to construct a language system which was as precise and logical as mathematics. Although Wittgenstein became a teacher of philosophy at Cambridge University from 1929 to 1947, he never abandoned his taste for the simple life. He made a habit of wearing open-necked shirts - at a time when most teachers and students wore ties - and furnished his college rooms with nothing more luxurious than deck chairs.