Frege's Life and Works
8 November 1848: Frege born in Wismar (Mecklenburg-Schwerin) in a Lutheran family. Father is a principal of a girls’ school.
1866: Death of Frege’s father from typhus.
1869–71: Frege attends the University of Jena. He is taught by e.g. the physicist Ernst Abbe, the mathematician Karl Snell, and the neo-Kantian Kuno Fischer. He studies analytic geometry and function theory.
1871–4: Frege attends University of Göttingen, taking courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry and philosophy of religion (with Hermann Lotze).
1873: Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Göttingen, with the thesis “On a Geometrical Representation of Imaginary Forms in the Plane”, in which he tried to lay down foundations for a portion of geometry.
1874: Frege, with the support of Abbe, presents his habilitation “Methods of Calculation based on an Extension of the Concept of Quantity” to the University of Jena. It is essentially a work on Abelian groups and invariant theory. Frege begins teaching Mathematics unpaid (as Privatdozent), and with a very high teaching load, at the University of Jena. Frege will spend over 40 years teaching here, where he would have little close contact with students or colleagues. One exception would be philosopher Rudolf Eucken, who was Frege’s colleague and with whom Frege maintained intellectual contact for over 40 years.
1879: Publication of Begriffsschrift (Conceptual Notation). Receives six reviews (by Reinhold Hoppe, John Venn, Paul Tannery, Kurd Lasswitz, Karl Michaëlis and Ernst Schröder).
- Professor Extraordinarius, University of Jena
- Frege begins to receive a stipend from the University of Jena.
1882: Frege writes to Carl Stumpf (or Anton Marty?): "I have now nearly completed a book in which I treat the concept of number and demonstrate that the first principles of computation, which up to now have generally been regarded as unprovable axioms, can be proved from definitions by means of logical laws alone."
1882-1884: Teaches part-time at the Pfeiffer Institute, a private school in Jena.
1884: Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations of Arithmetic). Receives three reviews.
1891: “Funktion und Begriff” (“Function and Concept”), lecture, "gehalten in der Sitzung vom 9. Januar 1891 der Jenaischen Gesellschaft für Medizin und Naturwissenschaft, Jena, 1891".
1892: “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” (“On Sense and Meaning”), in Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, C (1892): 25-50
- “Über Begriff und Gegenstand” (“On Concept and Object”), in Vierteljahresschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, XVI (1892): 192-205
- 1893: First volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Basic Laws of Arithmetic). Receives one review (by Giuseppe Peano).
- 1894: Review of Husserl’s Philosophie der Arithmetik.
- 1898: Death of mother.
- 1899: correspondence with David Hilbert.
- 1902: Russell writes to Frege, while Frege’s second volume of the Grundgesetze is in print, pointing out, using Russell's paradox, that Frege’s axioms in the first volume are inconsistent.- 1903: Second volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Basic Laws of Arithmetic). Receives one review (by Giuseppe Peano).
- 1904: Frege’s wife dies.
- "Was ist eine Funktion?" (“What is a Function?”), in Festschrift Ludwig Boltzmann gewidmet zum sechzigsten Geburtstage, S. Meyer (ed.), Leipzig, 1904, pp. 656-666.
- 1912: Frege declined Russell's invitation for him to address a mathematical congress in Cambridge.
- 1918: Frege received a donation from Ludwig Wittgenstein.
- Frege retires on a pension of 5,000 marks. He sells his house in Jena and buys a retirement home in the lake-side village of Bad Kleinen.
- 1918-1923: Publication of a series of articles – “Der Gedanke (“Thoughts”), "Die Verneinung" (“Negation”) and "Gedankengefüge" (“Compound Thoughts”), altogether called "Logische Untersuchungen" ("Logical Investigations"). A fourth article, "Logische Allgemeinheit" ("Logical Generality") remains unfinished.
- 26 July 1925: Frege dies in Bad Kleinen.
Source: T. W. Bynum, “Editor’s Introduction”, in: Bynum, T. W. (ed. and trans.) (1972), Conceptual Notation and Related Articles , Oxford: Clarendon.
1866: Death of Frege’s father from typhus.
1869–71: Frege attends the University of Jena. He is taught by e.g. the physicist Ernst Abbe, the mathematician Karl Snell, and the neo-Kantian Kuno Fischer. He studies analytic geometry and function theory.
1871–4: Frege attends University of Göttingen, taking courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry and philosophy of religion (with Hermann Lotze).
1873: Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Göttingen, with the thesis “On a Geometrical Representation of Imaginary Forms in the Plane”, in which he tried to lay down foundations for a portion of geometry.
1874: Frege, with the support of Abbe, presents his habilitation “Methods of Calculation based on an Extension of the Concept of Quantity” to the University of Jena. It is essentially a work on Abelian groups and invariant theory. Frege begins teaching Mathematics unpaid (as Privatdozent), and with a very high teaching load, at the University of Jena. Frege will spend over 40 years teaching here, where he would have little close contact with students or colleagues. One exception would be philosopher Rudolf Eucken, who was Frege’s colleague and with whom Frege maintained intellectual contact for over 40 years.
1879: Publication of Begriffsschrift (Conceptual Notation). Receives six reviews (by Reinhold Hoppe, John Venn, Paul Tannery, Kurd Lasswitz, Karl Michaëlis and Ernst Schröder).
- Professor Extraordinarius, University of Jena
- Frege begins to receive a stipend from the University of Jena.
1882: Frege writes to Carl Stumpf (or Anton Marty?): "I have now nearly completed a book in which I treat the concept of number and demonstrate that the first principles of computation, which up to now have generally been regarded as unprovable axioms, can be proved from definitions by means of logical laws alone."
1882-1884: Teaches part-time at the Pfeiffer Institute, a private school in Jena.
1884: Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations of Arithmetic). Receives three reviews.
1891: “Funktion und Begriff” (“Function and Concept”), lecture, "gehalten in der Sitzung vom 9. Januar 1891 der Jenaischen Gesellschaft für Medizin und Naturwissenschaft, Jena, 1891".
1892: “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” (“On Sense and Meaning”), in Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, C (1892): 25-50
- “Über Begriff und Gegenstand” (“On Concept and Object”), in Vierteljahresschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, XVI (1892): 192-205
- 1893: First volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Basic Laws of Arithmetic). Receives one review (by Giuseppe Peano).
- 1894: Review of Husserl’s Philosophie der Arithmetik.
- 1898: Death of mother.
- 1899: correspondence with David Hilbert.
- 1902: Russell writes to Frege, while Frege’s second volume of the Grundgesetze is in print, pointing out, using Russell's paradox, that Frege’s axioms in the first volume are inconsistent.- 1903: Second volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Basic Laws of Arithmetic). Receives one review (by Giuseppe Peano).
- 1904: Frege’s wife dies.
- "Was ist eine Funktion?" (“What is a Function?”), in Festschrift Ludwig Boltzmann gewidmet zum sechzigsten Geburtstage, S. Meyer (ed.), Leipzig, 1904, pp. 656-666.
- 1912: Frege declined Russell's invitation for him to address a mathematical congress in Cambridge.
- 1918: Frege received a donation from Ludwig Wittgenstein.
- Frege retires on a pension of 5,000 marks. He sells his house in Jena and buys a retirement home in the lake-side village of Bad Kleinen.
- 1918-1923: Publication of a series of articles – “Der Gedanke (“Thoughts”), "Die Verneinung" (“Negation”) and "Gedankengefüge" (“Compound Thoughts”), altogether called "Logische Untersuchungen" ("Logical Investigations"). A fourth article, "Logische Allgemeinheit" ("Logical Generality") remains unfinished.
- 26 July 1925: Frege dies in Bad Kleinen.
Source: T. W. Bynum, “Editor’s Introduction”, in: Bynum, T. W. (ed. and trans.) (1972), Conceptual Notation and Related Articles , Oxford: Clarendon.
[Under construction. Thanks to Prach Panchakunathorn.]