# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/ludwig-wittgenstein
# Generated: 2026-09-01T09:20:33.261Z

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url: "https://fame.am/person/ludwig-wittgenstein"
name: "Ludwig Wittgenstein"
slug: "ludwig-wittgenstein"
description: "He published one slim book in his lifetime — 75 pages that tried to solve all philosophical problems — then spent the rest of his career dismantling it. The Tractatus and the Investigations stand as opposite poles of 20th-century thought, both written by the same man."
tagline: "Austrian philosopher and logician (1889–1951)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Ludwig_Wittgenstein.jpg?width=1200"
gender: "male"
country:
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  isoCode: "GB"
category:
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  entityType: "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q39631"
birthDate: "1889-04-26"
deathDate: "1951-04-29"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
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  trendDirection:       "FALLING"
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# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Born in 1889 into one of Europe's richest families in Vienna, Wittgenstein inherited a fortune in 1913 and immediately gave large sums to struggling artists including Rilke and Trakl — then, in 1916, donated a million crowns for a military mortar. Three of his four older brothers died by suicide. He served as a decorated officer on the front line in World War I, then gave away his remaining wealth in a period of severe depression and left academia to teach in remote Austrian villages, where he used violent corporal punishment on students during math classes and sparked controversy in incidents like the Haidbauer affair. From 1929 to 1947 he taught at Cambridge, though he left academia repeatedly to work as a hospital porter in London and a lab technician in Newcastle during World War II. His voluminous manuscripts were published after his death in 1951; the 1953 Philosophical Investigations was later ranked the most important philosophy book of the century, "the one crossover masterpiece" that appealed across all specializations.