title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Wittgenstein's relationship with David Pinsent occurred during an intellectually formative period, and is well documented. Bertrand Russell introduced Wittgenstein to Pinsent in the summer of 1912. Pinsent was a mathematics undergraduate and a relation of David Hume, and Wittgenstein and he soon became very close. The men worked together on experiments in the psychology laboratory about the role of rhythm in the appreciation of music, and Wittgenstein delivered a paper on the subject to the British Psychological Association in Cambridge in 1912. They also travelled together, including to Iceland in September 1912the expenses paid by Wittgenstein, including first class travel, the hiring of a private train, and new clothes and spending money for Pinsent. In addition to Iceland, Wittgenstein and Pinsent traveled to Norway in 1913. In determining their destination, Wittgenstein and Pinsent visited a tourist office in search of a location that would fulfill the following criteria: a small village located on a fjord, a location away from tourists, and a peaceful destination to allow them to study logic and law. Choosing Øystese, Wittgenstein and Pinsent arrived in the small village on 4 September 1913. During a vacation lasting almost three weeks, Wittgenstein was able to work vigorously on his studies. The immense progress on logic during their stay led Wittgenstein to express to Pinsent his notion of leaving Cambridge and returning to Norway to continue his work on logic. Pinsent's diaries provide valuable insights into Wittgenstein's personality: sensitive, nervous, and attuned to the tiniest slight or change in mood from Pinsent. Pinsent also writes of Wittgenstein being "absolutely sulky and snappish" at times, as well. In his diaries Pinsent wrote about shopping for furniture with Wittgenstein in Cambridge when the latter was given rooms in Trinity. Most of what they found in the stores was not minimalist enough for Wittgenstein's aesthetics: I went and helped him interview a lot of furniture at various shops ... It was rather amusing: He is terribly fastidious and we led the shopman a frightful dance, Vittgenstein [sic] ejaculating ""No – Beastly!"" to 90 percent of what he shewed us!He wrote in May 1912 that Wittgenstein had just begun to study the history of philosophy: He expresses the most naive surprise that all the philosophers he once worshipped in ignorance are after all stupid and dishonest and make disgusting mistakes!The last time they saw each other was on 8 October 1913 at Lordswood House in Birmingham, then residence of the Pinsent family: I got up at 6:15 to see Ludwig off. He had to go very earlyback to Cambridgeas he has lots to do there. I saw him off from the house in a taxi at 7:00to catch a 7:30  train from New Street Station. It was sad parting from him.Wittgenstein left to live in Norway.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Karl Wittgenstein died on 20 January 1913, and after receiving his inheritance Wittgenstein became one of the wealthiest men in Europe. He donated some of his money, at first anonymously, to Austrian artists and writers, including Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl. Trakl requested to meet his benefactor but in 1914 when Wittgenstein went to visit, Trakl had killed himself. Wittgenstein came to feel that he could not get to the heart of his most fundamental questions while surrounded by other academics, and so in 1913 he retreated to the village of Skjolden in Norway, where he rented the second floor of a house for the winter. He later saw this as one of the most productive periods of his life, writing "Logik" ("Notes on Logic"), the predecessor of much of the "Tractatus".


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: While in Norway, Wittgenstein learned Norwegian to converse with the local villagers, and Danish to read the works of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. He adored the "quiet seriousness" of the landscape but even Skjolden became too busy for him. He soon designed a small wooden house which was erected on a remote rock overlooking the Eidsvatnet Lake just outside the village. The place was called "Østerrike" (Austria) by locals. He lived there during various periods until the 1930s, and substantial parts of his works were written there. (The house was broken up in 1958 to be rebuilt in the village. A local foundation collected donations and bought it in 2014; it was dismantled again and re-erected at its original location; the inauguration took place on 20 June 2019 with international attendance.)


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: It was during this time that Wittgenstein began addressing what he considered to be a central issue in "Notes on Logic", a general decision procedure for determining the truth value of logical propositions which would stem from a single primitive proposition. He became convinced during this time that [a]ll the propositions of logic are generalizations of tautologies and all generalizations of tautologies are generalizations of logic. There are no other logical propositions.Based on this, Wittgenstein argued that propositions of logic express their truth or falsehood in the sign itself, and one need not know anything about the constituent parts of the proposition to determine it true or false. Rather, one simply need identify the statement as a tautology (true), a contradiction (false), or neither.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: The problem lay in forming a primitive proposition which encompassed this and would act as the basis for all of logic. As he stated in correspondence with Russell in late 1913, The big question now is, how must a system of signs be constituted in order to make every tautology recognizable as such IN ONE AND THE SAME WAY? This is the fundamental problem of logic!The importance Wittgenstein placed upon this fundamental problem was so great that he believed if he did not solve it, he had no reason or right to live. Despite this apparent life-or-death importance, Wittgenstein had given up on this primitive proposition by the time of the writing of the "Tractatus". The "Tractatus" does not offer any general process for identifying propositions as tautologies; in a simpler manner, Every tautology itself shows that it is a tautology.This shift to understanding tautologies through mere identification or recognition occurred in 1914 when Moore was called on by Wittgenstein to assist him in dictating his notes.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: At Wittgenstein's insistence, Moore, who was now a Cambridge don, visited him in Norway in 1914, reluctantly because Wittgenstein exhausted him. David Edmonds and John Eidinow write that Wittgenstein regarded Moore, an internationally known philosopher, as an example of how far someone could get in life with ""absolutely no intelligence whatever."" In Norway it was clear that Moore was expected to act as Wittgenstein's secretary, taking down his notes, with Wittgenstein falling into a rage when Moore got something wrong. When he returned to Cambridge, Moore asked the university to consider accepting "Logik" as sufficient for a bachelor's degree, but they refused, saying it wasn't formatted properly: no footnotes, no preface. Wittgenstein was furious, writing to Moore in May 1914: If I am not worth your making an exception for me "even in some STUPID details" then I may as well go to Hell directly; and if I "am" worth it and you don't do it then – by God – "you" might go there.Moore was apparently distraught; he wrote in his diary that he felt sick and could not get the letter out of his head. The two did not speak again until 1929.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: On the outbreak of World War I, Wittgenstein immediately volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian Army, despite being eligible for a medical exemption. He served first on a ship and then in an artillery workshop "several miles from the action". He was wounded in an accidental explosion, and hospitalised to Kraków. In March 1916, he was posted to a fighting unit on the front line of the Russian front, as part of the Austrian 7th Army, where his unit was involved in some of the heaviest fighting, defending against the Brusilov Offensive. Wittgenstein directed the fire of his own artillery from an observation post in no-man's land against Allied troopsone of the most dangerous jobs, since he was targeted by enemy fire. He was decorated with the Military Merit with Swords on the Ribbon, and was commended by the army for "exceptionally courageous behaviour, calmness, sang-froid, and heroism" that "won the total admiration of the troops". In January 1917, he was sent as a member of a howitzer regiment to the Russian front, where he won several more medals for bravery including the Silver Medal for Valour, First Class. In 1918, he was promoted to lieutenant and sent to the Italian front as part of an artillery regiment. For his part in the final Austrian offensive of June 1918, he was recommended for the Gold Medal for Valour, one of the highest honours in the Austrian army, but was instead awarded the Band of the Military Service Medal with Swordsit being decided that this particular action, although extraordinarily brave, had been insufficiently consequential to merit the highest honour.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Throughout the war, he kept notebooks in which he frequently wrote philosophical reflections alongside personal remarks, including his contempt for the character of the other soldiers. His notebooks also attest to his philosophical and spiritual reflections, and it was during this time that he experienced a kind of religious awakening. In his entry from 11 June 1915, Wittgenstein states that The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God. And connect with this the comparison of God to a father. To pray is to think about the meaning of life. and on 8 July that To believe in God means to understand the meaning of life. To believe in God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning [ ... ]When my conscience upsets my equilibrium, then I am not in agreement with Something. But what is this? Is it "the world"? Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of God. He discovered Leo Tolstoy's 1896 "The Gospel in Brief" at a bookshop in Tarnów, and carried it everywhere, recommending it to anyone in distress, to the point where he became known to his fellow soldiers as "the man with the gospels".


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: The extent to which "The Gospel in Brief" influenced Wittgenstein can be seen in the "Tractatus", in the unique way both books number their sentences. In 1916 Wittgenstein read Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" so often that he knew whole passages of it by heart, particularly the speeches of the elder Zosima, who represented for him a powerful Christian ideal, a holy man "who could see directly into the souls of other people".


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Iain King has suggested that Wittgenstein's writing changed substantially in 1916, when he started confronting much greater dangers during frontline fighting. Russell said he returned from the war a changed man, one with a deeply mystical and ascetic attitude.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: In the summer of 1918 Wittgenstein took military leave and went to stay in one of his family's Vienna summer houses, Neuwaldegg. It was there in August 1918 that he completed the "Tractatus", which he submitted with the title "Der Satz" (German: proposition, sentence, phrase, set, but also "leap") to the publishers Jahoda and Siegel.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: A series of events around this time left him deeply upset. On 13 August, his uncle Paul died. On 25 October, he learned that Jahoda and Siegel had decided not to publish the "Tractatus", and on 27 October, his brother Kurt killed himself, the third of his brothers to commit suicide. It was around this time he received a letter from David Pinsent's mother to say that Pinsent had been killed in a plane crash on 8 May. Wittgenstein was distraught to the point of being suicidal. He was sent back to the Italian front after his leave and, as a result of the defeat of the Austrian army, he was captured by Allied forces on 3 November in Trentino. He subsequently spent nine months in an Italian prisoner of war camp.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: He returned to his family in Vienna on 25 August 1919, by all accounts physically and mentally spent. He apparently talked incessantly about suicide, terrifying his sisters and brother Paul. He decided to do two things: to enroll in teacher training college as an elementary school teacher, and to get rid of his fortune. In 1914, it had been providing him with an income of 300,000 Kronen a year, but by 1919 was worth a great deal more, with a sizable portfolio of investments in the United States and the Netherlands. He divided it among his siblings, except for Margarete, insisting that it not be held in trust for him. His family saw him as ill, and acquiesced.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: In September 1919 he enrolled in the "Lehrerbildungsanstalt" (teacher training college) in the "Kundmanngasse" in Vienna. His sister Hermine said that Wittgenstein working as an elementary teacher was like using a precision instrument to open crates, but the family decided not to interfere. Thomas Bernhard, more critically, wrote of this period in Wittgenstein's life: "the multi-millionaire as a village schoolmaster is surely a piece of perversity."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: In the summer of 1920, Wittgenstein worked as a gardener for a monastery. At first he applied, under a false name, for a teaching post at Reichenau, was awarded the job, but he declined it when his identity was discovered. As a teacher, he wished to no longer be recognized as a member of the Wittgenstein family. In response, his brother Paul wrote: It is out of the question, really completely out of the question, that anybody bearing our name and whose elegant and gentle upbringing can be seen a thousand paces off, would not be identified as a member of our family ... That one can neither simulate nor dissimulate anything including a refined education I need hardly tell you.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: In 1920, Wittgenstein was given his first job as a primary school teacher in Trattenbach, under his real name, in a remote village of a few hundred people. His first letters describe it as beautiful, but in October 1921, he wrote to Russell: "I am still at Trattenbach, surrounded, as ever, by odiousness and baseness. I know that human beings on the average are not worth much anywhere, but here they are much more good-for-nothing and irresponsible than elsewhere." He was soon the object of gossip among the villagers, who found him eccentric at best. He did not get on well with the other teachers; when he found his lodgings too noisy, he made a bed for himself in the school kitchen. He was an enthusiastic teacher, offering late-night extra tuition to several of the students, something that did not endear him to the parents, though some of them came to adore him; his sister Hermine occasionally watched him teach and said the students "literally crawled over each other in their desire to be chosen for answers or demonstrations."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: To the less able, it seems that he became something of a tyrant. The first two hours of each day were devoted to mathematics, hours that Monk writes some of the pupils recalled years later with horror. They reported that he caned the boys and boxed their ears, and also that he pulled the girls' hair; this was not unusual at the time for boys, but for the villagers he went too far in doing it to the girls too; girls were not expected to understand algebra, much less have their ears boxed over it. The violence apart, Monk writes that he quickly became a village legend, shouting "Krautsalat!" ("coleslaw" – i.e. shredded cabbage) when the headmaster played the piano, and "Nonsense!" when a priest was answering children's questions.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: While Wittgenstein was living in isolation in rural Austria, the "Tractatus" was published to considerable interest, first in German in 1921 as "Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung", part of Wilhelm Ostwald's journal "Annalen der Naturphilosophie", though Wittgenstein was not happy with the result and called it a pirate edition. Russell had agreed to write an introduction to explain why it was important, because it was otherwise unlikely to have been published: it was difficult if not impossible to understand, and Wittgenstein was unknown in philosophy. In a letter to Russell, Wittgenstein wrote "The main point is the theory of what can be expressed (gesagt) by prop[osition]s – i.e. by language – (and, which comes to the same thing, what can be "thought") and what can not be expressed by pro[position]s, but only shown (gezeigt); which, I believe, is the cardinal problem of philosophy." But Wittgenstein was not happy with Russell's help. He had lost faith in Russell, finding him glib and his philosophy mechanistic, and felt he had fundamentally misunderstood the "Tractatus".


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: An English translation was prepared in Cambridge by Frank Ramsey, a mathematics undergraduate at King's commissioned by C. K. Ogden. It was Moore who suggested "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" for the title, an allusion to Baruch Spinoza's "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus." Initially there were difficulties in finding a publisher for the English edition too, because Wittgenstein was insisting it appear without Russell's introduction; Cambridge University Press turned it down for that reason. Finally in 1922 an agreement was reached with Wittgenstein that Kegan Paul would print a bilingual edition with Russell's introduction and the Ramsey-Ogden translation. This is the translation that was approved by Wittgenstein, but it is problematic in a number of ways. Wittgenstein's English was poor at the time, and Ramsey was a teenager who had only recently learned German, so philosophers often prefer to use a 1961 translation by David Pears and Brian McGuinness.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: An aim of the "Tractatus" is to reveal the relationship between language and the world: what can be said about it, and what can only be shown. Wittgenstein argues that the logical structure of language provides the limits of meaning. The limits of language, for Wittgenstein, are the limits of philosophy. Much of philosophy involves attempts to say the unsayable: "What we can say at all can be said clearly," he argues. Anything beyond that – religion, ethics, aesthetics, the mystical – cannot be discussed. They are not in themselves nonsensical, but any statement about them must be. He wrote in the preface: "The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rather – not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought)."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: The book is 75 pages long – "As to the shortness of the book, I am "awfully sorry for it" ... If you were to squeeze me like a lemon you would get nothing more out of me," he told Ogden – and presents seven numbered propositions (1–7), with various sub-levels (1, 1.1, 1.11):


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: In September 1922 he moved to a secondary school in a nearby village, Hassbach, but considered the people there just as bad – "These people are not human "at all" but loathsome worms," he wrote to a friend – and he left after a month. In November he began work at another primary school, this time in Puchberg in the Schneeberg mountains. There, he told Russell, the villagers were "one-quarter animal and three-quarters human."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Frank P. Ramsey visited him on 17 September 1923 to discuss the "Tractatus"; he had agreed to write a review of it for "Mind". He reported in a letter home that Wittgenstein was living frugally in one tiny whitewashed room that only had space for a bed, a washstand, a small table, and one small hard chair. Ramsey shared an evening meal with him of coarse bread, butter, and cocoa. Wittgenstein's school hours were eight to twelve or one, and he had afternoons free. After Ramsey returned to Cambridge a long campaign began among Wittgenstein's friends to persuade him to return to Cambridge and away from what they saw as a hostile environment for him. He was accepting no help even from his family. Ramsey wrote to John Maynard Keynes: [Wittgenstein's family] are very rich and extremely anxious to give him money or do anything for him in any way, and he rejects all their advances; even Christmas presents or presents of invalid's food, when he is ill, he sends back. And this is not because they aren't on good terms but because he won't have any money he hasn't earned ... It is an awful pity.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: He moved schools again in September 1924, this time to Otterthal, near Trattenbach; the socialist headmaster, Josef Putre, was someone Wittgenstein had become friends with while at Trattenbach. While he was there, he wrote a 42-page pronunciation and spelling dictionary for the children, "Wörterbuch für Volksschulen", published in Vienna in 1926 by Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, the only book of his apart from the "Tractatus" that was published in his lifetime. A first edition sold in 2005 for £75,000. In 2020, an English version entitled "Word Book" translated by art historian Bettina Funcke and illustrated by artist / publisher Paul Chan was released.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: An incident occurred in April 1926 and became known as "Der Vorfall Haidbauer" (the Haidbauer incident). Josef Haidbauer was an 11-year-old pupil whose father had died and whose mother worked as a local maid. He was a slow learner, and one day Wittgenstein hit him two or three times on the head, causing him to collapse. Wittgenstein carried him to the headmaster's office, then quickly left the school, bumping into a parent, Herr Piribauer, on the way out. Piribauer had been sent for by the children when they saw Haidbauer collapse; Wittgenstein had previously pulled Piribauer's daughter, Hermine, so hard by the ears that her ears had bled. Piribauer said that when he met Wittgenstein in the hall that day: I called him all the names under the sun. I told him he wasn't a teacher, he was an animal-trainer! And that I was going to fetch the police right away!Piribauer tried to have Wittgenstein arrested, but the village's police station was empty, and when he tried again the next day he was told Wittgenstein had disappeared. On 28 April 1926, Wittgenstein handed in his resignation to Wilhelm Kundt, a local school inspector, who tried to persuade him to stay; however, Wittgenstein was adamant that his days as a schoolteacher were over. Proceedings were initiated in May, and the judge ordered a psychiatric report; in August 1926 a letter to Wittgenstein from a friend, Ludwig Hänsel, indicates that hearings were ongoing, but nothing is known about the case after that. Alexander Waugh writes that Wittgenstein's family and their money may have had a hand in covering things up. Waugh writes that Haidbauer died shortly afterwards of haemophilia; Monk says he died when he was 14 of leukaemia.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Ten years later, in 1936, as part of a series of "confessions" he engaged in that year, Wittgenstein appeared without warning at the village saying he wanted to confess personally and ask for pardon from the children he had hit. He visited at least four of the children, including Hermine Piribauer, who apparently replied only with a "Ja, ja," though other former students were more hospitable. Monk writes that the purpose of these confessions was notto hurt his pride, as a form of punishment; it was to dismantle it – to remove a barrier, as it were, that stood in the way of honest and decent thought.Of the apologies, Wittgenstein wrote, This brought me into more settled waters... and to greater seriousness.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: The "Tractatus" was now the subject of much debate amongst philosophers, and Wittgenstein was a figure of increasing international fame. In particular, a discussion group of philosophers, scientists and mathematicians, known as the Vienna Circle, had built up purportedly as a result of the inspiration they had been given by reading the "Tractatus". While it is commonly assumed that Wittgenstein was a part of the Vienna Circle, in reality, this was not actually the case. German philosopher Oswald Hanfling writes bluntly: "Wittgenstein was never a member of the Circle, though he was in Vienna during much of the time.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Yet his influence on the Circle's thought was at least as important as that of any of its members." However, the philosopher A. C. Grayling contends that while certain superficial similarities between Wittgenstein's early philosophy and logical positivism led its members to study the "Tractatus" in detail and to arrange discussions with him, Wittgenstein's influence on the Circle was rather limited. The fundamental philosophical views of Circle had been established before they met Wittgenstein and had their origins in the British empiricists, Ernst Mach, and the logic of Frege and Russell. Whatever influence Wittgenstein did have on the Circle was largely limited to Moritz Schlick and Friedrich Waismann and, even in these cases, resulted in little lasting effect on their positivism. Grayling states: "...it is no longer possible to think of the "Tractatus" as having inspired a philosophical movement, as most earlier commentators claimed."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: From 1926, with the members of the Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein would take part in many discussions. However, during these discussions, it soon became evident that Wittgenstein held a different attitude towards philosophy than the members of the Circle. For example, during meetings of the Vienna Circle, he would express his disagreement with the group's misreading of his work by turning his back to them and reading poetry aloud. In his autobiography, Rudolf Carnap describes Wittgenstein as the thinker who gave him the greatest inspiration. However, he also wrote that "there was a striking difference between Wittgenstein's attitude toward philosophical problems and that of Schlick and myself. Our attitude toward philosophical problems was not very different from that which scientists have toward their problems." As for Wittgenstein:


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: In 1926 Wittgenstein was again working as a gardener for a number of months, this time at the monastery of Hütteldorf, where he had also inquired about becoming a monk. His sister, Margaret, invited him to help with the design of her new townhouse in Vienna's "Kundmanngasse". Wittgenstein, his friend Paul Engelmann, and a team of architects developed a spare modernist house. In particular, Wittgenstein focused on the windows, doors, and radiators, demanding that every detail be exactly as he specified. When the house was nearly finished Wittgenstein had an entire ceiling raised 30 mm so that the room had the exact proportions he wanted. Monk writes that "This is not so marginal as it may at first appear, for it is precisely these details that lend what is otherwise a rather plain, even ugly house its distinctive beauty."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: It took him a year to design the door handles and another to design the radiators. Each window was covered by a metal screen that weighed , moved by a pulley Wittgenstein designed. Bernhard Leitner, author of "The Architecture of Ludwig Wittgenstein", said there is barely anything comparable in the history of interior design: "It is as ingenious as it is expensive. A metal curtain that could be lowered into the floor."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: The house was finished by December 1928 and the family gathered there at Christmas to celebrate its completion. Wittgenstein's sister Hermine wrote: "Even though I admired the house very much. ... It seemed indeed to be much more a dwelling for the gods." Wittgenstein said "the house I built for Gretl is the product of a decidedly sensitive ear and "good" manners, and expression of great "understanding"... But "primordial" life, wild life striving to erupt into the open – that is lacking." Monk comments that the same might be said of the technically excellent, but austere, terracotta sculpture Wittgenstein had modelled of Marguerite Respinger in 1926, and that, as Russell first noticed, this "wild life striving to be in the open" was precisely the substance of Wittgenstein's philosophical work.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: According to Feigl (as reported by Monk), upon attending a conference in Vienna by mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer, Wittgenstein remained quite impressed, taking into consideration the possibility of a "return to Philosophy". At the urging of Ramsey and others, Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929. Keynes wrote in a letter to his wife: "Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5.15 train." Despite this fame, he could not initially work at Cambridge as he did not have a degree, so he applied as an advanced undergraduate. Russell noted that his previous residency was sufficient to fulfil eligibility requirements for a PhD, and urged him to offer the "Tractatus" as his thesis. It was examined in 1929 by Russell and Moore; at the end of the thesis defence, Wittgenstein clapped the two examiners on the shoulder and said, '"Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it." Moore wrote in the examiner's report: "I myself consider that this is a work of genius; but, even if I am completely mistaken and it is nothing of the sort, it is well above the standard required for the Ph.D. degree." Wittgenstein was appointed as a lecturer and was made a fellow of Trinity College.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: From 1936 to 1937, Wittgenstein lived again in Norway, where he worked on the "Philosophical Investigations". In the winter of 1936/7, he delivered a series of "confessions" to close friends, most of them about minor infractions like white lies, in an effort to cleanse himself. In 1938, he travelled to Ireland to visit Maurice O'Connor Drury, a friend who became a psychiatrist, and considered such training himself, with the intention of abandoning philosophy for it. The visit to Ireland was at the same time a response to the invitation of the then Irish Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, himself a former mathematics teacher. De Valera hoped Wittgenstein's presence would contribute to the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies which he was soon to set up.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: While he was in Ireland in March 1938, Germany annexed Austria in the "Anschluss"; the Viennese Wittgenstein was now a Jew under the 1935 Nuremberg racial laws, because three of his grandparents had been born as Jews. He would also, in July, become by law a citizen of the enlarged Germany.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: The Nuremberg Laws classified people as Jews ("Volljuden") if they had three or four Jewish grandparents, and as mixed blood ("Mischling") if they had one or two. It meant "inter alia" that the Wittgensteins were restricted in whom they could marry or have sex with, and where they could work.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: After the Anschluss, his brother Paul left almost immediately for England, and later the US. The Nazis discovered his relationship with Hilde Schania, a brewer's daughter with whom he had had two children but whom he had never married, though he did later. Because she was not Jewish, he was served with a summons for "Rassenschande" (racial defilement). He told no one he was leaving the country, except for Hilde who agreed to follow him. He left so suddenly and quietly that for a time people believed he was the fourth Wittgenstein brother to have committed suicide.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Wittgenstein began to investigate acquiring British or Irish citizenship with the help of Keynes, and apparently had to confess to his friends in England that he had earlier misrepresented himself to them as having just one Jewish grandparent, when in fact he had three.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: A few days before the invasion of Poland, Hitler personally granted "Mischling" status to the Wittgenstein siblings. In 1939 there were 2,100 applications for this, and Hitler granted only 12. Anthony Gottlieb writes that the pretext was that their paternal grandfather had been the bastard son of a German prince, which allowed the Reichsbank to claim foreign currency, stocks and 1700 kg of gold held in Switzerland by a Wittgenstein family trust. Gretl, an American citizen by marriage, started the negotiations over the racial status of their grandfather, and the family's large foreign currency reserves were used as a bargaining tool. Paul had escaped to Switzerland and then the US in July 1938, and disagreed with the negotiations, leading to a permanent split between the siblings. After the war, when Paul was performing in Vienna, he did not visit Hermine who was dying there, and he had no further contact with Ludwig or Gretl.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: After G.E. Moore resigned the chair in philosophy in 1939, Wittgenstein was elected. He was naturalised as a British subject shortly after on 12 April 1939. In July 1939 he travelled to Vienna to assist Gretl and his other sisters, visiting Berlin for one day to meet an official of the Reichsbank. After this, he travelled to New York to persuade Paul, whose agreement was required, to back the scheme. The required "Befreiung" was granted in August 1939. The unknown amount signed over to the Nazis by the Wittgenstein family, a week or so before the outbreak of war, included amongst many other assets 1,700 kg of gold. There is a report Wittgenstein visited Moscow a second time in 1939, travelling from Berlin, and again met the philosopher Sophia Janowskaya.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Norman Malcolm, at the time a post-graduate research fellow at Cambridge, describes his first impressions of Wittgenstein in 1938:


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: After work, the philosopher would often relax by watching Westerns, where he preferred to sit at the very front of the cinema, or reading detective stories especially the ones written by Norbert Davis. Norman Malcolm wrote that Wittgenstein would rush to the cinema when class ended.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: By this time, Wittgenstein's view on the foundations of mathematics had changed considerably. In his early 20s, Wittgenstein had thought logic could provide a solid foundation, and he had even considered updating Russell and Whitehead's "Principia Mathematica". Now he denied there were any mathematical facts to be discovered. He gave a series of lectures on mathematics, discussing this and other topics, documented in a book, with lectures by Wittgenstein and discussions between him and several students, including the young Alan Turing who described Wittgenstein as ""a "very" peculiar man"". The two had many discussions about the relationship between computational logic and everyday notions of truth.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Wittgenstein's lectures from this period have also been discussed by another of his students, the Greek philosopher and educator Helle Lambridis. Wittgenstein's teachings in the years 1940–1941 are used in the mid-1950s by Lambridis to write a long text in the form of an imagined dialogue with him, where she begins to develop her own ideas about resemblance in relation to language, elementary concepts and basic-level mental images. Initially only a part of it was published in 1963 in the German education theory review "Club Voltaire", but the entire imagined dialogue with Wittgenstein was published after Lambridis's death by her archive holder, the Academy of Athens, in 2004.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Monk writes that Wittgenstein found it intolerable that a war (World War II) was going on and he was teaching philosophy. He grew angry when any of his students wanted to become professional philosophers.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: In September 1941, he asked John Ryle, the brother of the philosopher Gilbert Ryle, if he could get a manual job at Guy's Hospital in London. John Ryle was professor of medicine at Cambridge and had been involved in helping Guy's prepare for the Blitz. Wittgenstein told Ryle he would die slowly if left at Cambridge, and he would rather die quickly. He started working at Guy's shortly afterwards as a dispensary porter, delivering drugs from the pharmacy to the wards where he apparently advised the patients not to take them. In the new year of 1942, Ryle took Wittgenstein to his home in Sussex to meet his wife who had been determined to meet him. His son recorded the weekend in his diary;Wink is awful strange [sic] – not a very good english speaker, keeps on saying 'I mean' and 'its "tolerable"' meaning intolerable. The hospital staff were not told he was one of the world's most famous philosophers, though some of the medical staff did recognize him – at least one had attended Moral Sciences Club meetings – but they were discreet. "Good God, don't tell anybody who I am!" Wittgenstein begged one of them. Some of them nevertheless called him Professor Wittgenstein, and he was allowed to dine with the doctors. He wrote on 1 April 1942: "I no longer feel any hope for the future of my life. It is as though I had before me nothing more than a long stretch of living death. I cannot imagine any future for me other than a ghastly one. Friendless and joyless." It was at this time that Wittgenstein had an operation at Guy's to remove a gallstone that had troubled him for some years.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: He had developed a friendship with Keith Kirk, a working-class teenage friend of Francis Skinner, the mathematics undergraduate he had had a relationship with until Skinner's death in 1941 from polio. Skinner had given up academia, thanks at least in part to Wittgenstein's influence, and had been working as a mechanic in 1939, with Kirk as his apprentice. Kirk and Wittgenstein struck up a friendship, with Wittgenstein giving him lessons in physics to help him pass a City and Guilds exam. During his period of loneliness at Guy's he wrote in his diary: "For ten days I've heard nothing more from K, even though I pressed him a week ago for news. I think that he has perhaps broken with me. A "tragic" thought!" Kirk had in fact got married, and they never saw one another again.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: While Wittgenstein was at Guy's he met Basil Reeve, a young doctor with an interest in philosophy, who, with R. T. Grant, was studying the effect of wound shock (a state associative to hypovolaemia) on air-raid casualties. When the Blitz ended there were fewer casualties to study. In November 1942, Grant and Reeve moved to the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne, to study road traffic and industrial casualties. Grant offered Wittgenstein a position as a laboratory assistant at a wage of £4 per week, and he lived in Newcastle (at 28 Brandling Park, Jesmond) from 29 April 1943 until February 1944. While there he worked


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: In the summer of 1946, Wittgenstein thought often of leaving Cambridge and resigning his position as Chair. Wittgenstein grew further dismayed at the state of philosophy, particularly about articles published in the journal "Mind". It was around this time that Wittgenstein fell in love with Ben Richards, writing in his diary, "The only thing that my love for B. has done for me is this: it has driven the other small worries associated with my position and my work into the background." On 30 September, Wittgenstein wrote about Cambridge after his return from Swansea, "Everything about the place repels me. The stiffness, the artificiality, the self-satisfaction of the people. The university atmosphere nauseates me."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Wittgenstein had only maintained contact with Fouracre, from Guy's hospital, who had joined the army in 1943 after his marriage, only returning in 1947. Wittgenstein maintained frequent correspondence with Fouracre during his time away displaying a desire for Fouracre to return home urgently from the war.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: In May 1947, Wittgenstein addressed a group of Oxford philosophers for the first time at the Jowett Society. The discussion was on the validity of Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum", where Wittgenstein ignored the question and applied his own philosophical method. Harold Arthur Prichard who attended the event was not pleased with Wittgenstein's methods;Wittgenstein: If a man says to me, looking at the sky, 'I think it will rain, therefore I exist', I do not understand him.Prichard: That's all very fine; what we want to know is: is the "cogito" valid or not?


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Wittgenstein resigned the professorship at Cambridge in 1947 to concentrate on his writing, and in 1947 and 1948 travelled to Ireland, staying at Ross's Hotel in Dublin and at a farmhouse in Redcross, County Wicklow, where he began the manuscript MS 137, volume R. Seeking solitude he moved to a holiday cottage in Rosroe overlooking Killary Harbour, Connemara owned by Drury's brother.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: He also accepted an invitation from Norman Malcolm, then professor at Cornell University, to stay with him and his wife for several months at Ithaca, New York. He made the trip in April 1949, although he told Malcolm he was too unwell to do philosophical work: "I haven't done any work since the beginning of March & I haven't had the strength of even trying to do any." A doctor in Dublin had diagnosed anaemia and prescribed iron and liver pills. The details of Wittgenstein's stay in America are recounted in Norman Malcolm's "Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir". During his summer in America, Wittgenstein began his epistemological discussions, in particular his engagement with philosophical scepticism, that would eventually become the final fragments "On Certainty".


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: He returned to London, where he was diagnosed with an inoperable prostate cancer, which had spread to his bone marrow. He spent the next two months in Vienna, where his sister Hermine died on 11 February 1950; he went to see her every day, but she was hardly able to speak or recognize him. "Great loss for me and all of us," he wrote. "Greater than I would have thought." He moved around a lot after Hermine's death staying with various friends: to Cambridge in April 1950, where he stayed with G.H. von Wright; to London to stay with Rush Rhees; then to Oxford to see Elizabeth Anscombe, writing to Norman Malcolm that he was hardly doing any philosophy. He went to Norway in August with Ben Richards, then returned to Cambridge, where on 27 November he moved into "Storey's End" at 76 Storey's Way, the home of his doctor, Edward Bevan, and his wife Joan; he had told them he did not want to die in a hospital, so they said he could spend his last days in their home instead. Joan at first was afraid of Wittgenstein, but they soon became good friends.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: By the beginning of 1951, it was clear that he had little time left. He wrote a new will in Oxford on 29 January, naming Rhees as his executor, and Anscombe and von Wright his literary administrators, and wrote to Norman Malcolm that month to say, "My mind's completely dead. This isn't a complaint, for I don't really suffer from it. I know that life must have an end once and that mental life can cease before the rest does." In February, he returned to the Bevans' home to work on MS 175 and MS 176. These and other manuscripts were later published as "Remarks on Colour" and "On Certainty". He wrote to Malcolm on 16 April, 13 days before his death:


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: An extraordinary thing happened to me. About a month ago I suddenly found myself in the right frame of mind for doing philosophy. I had been "absolutely" certain that I'd never again be able to do it. It's the first time after more than 2 years that the curtain in my brain has gone up. – Of course, so far I've only worked for about 5 weeks & it may be all over by tomorrow; but it bucks me up a lot now.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Wittgenstein began work on his final manuscript, MS 177, on 25 April 1951. It was his 62nd birthday on 26 April. He went for a walk the next afternoon, and wrote his last entry that day, 27 April. That evening, he became very ill; when his doctor told him he might live only a few days, he reportedly replied, "Good!" Joan stayed with him throughout that night, and just before losing consciousness for the last time on 28 April, he told her: "Tell them I've had a wonderful life." Norman Malcolm describes this as a "strangely moving utterance".


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Four of Wittgenstein's former students arrived at his bedside – Ben Richards, Elizabeth Anscombe, Yorick Smythies, and Maurice O'Connor Drury. Anscombe and Smythies were Catholics; and, at the latter's request, a Dominican friar, Father Conrad Pepler, also attended. (Wittgenstein had asked for a "priest who was not a philosopher" and had met with Pepler several times before his death.) They were at first unsure what Wittgenstein would have wanted, but then remembered he had said he hoped his Catholic friends would pray for him, so they did, and he was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Wittgenstein was given a Catholic burial at Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge. Drury later said he had been troubled ever since about whether that was the right thing to do. In 2015 the ledger gravestone was refurbished by the British Wittgenstein Society.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: On his religious views, Wittgenstein was said to be greatly interested in Catholicism, and was sympathetic to it, but did not consider himself to be a Catholic. According to Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein saw Catholicism more as a way of life than as a set of beliefs he held, considering that he did not accept any religious faith.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Wittgenstein has no goal to either support or reject religion; his only interest is to keep discussions, whether religious or not, clear. — T. Labron (2006)


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: The "Blue Book", a set of notes dictated to his class at Cambridge in 1933–1934, contains the seeds of Wittgenstein's later thoughts on language and is widely read as a turning point in his philosophy of language.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: "Philosophical Investigations" was published in two parts in 1953. Most of Part I was ready for printing in 1946, but Wittgenstein withdrew the manuscript from his publisher. The shorter Part II was added by his editors, Elizabeth Anscombe and Rush Rhees. Wittgenstein asks the reader to think of language as a multiplicity of language games within which parts of language develop and function. He argues that the bewitchments of philosophical problems arise from philosophers' misguided attempts to consider the meaning of words independently of their context, usage, and grammar — what he called "language gone on holiday".


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: According to Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise when language is forced from its proper home into a metaphysical environment, where all the familiar and necessary landmarks and contextual clues are removed. He describes this metaphysical environment as like being on frictionless ice: where the conditions are apparently perfect for a philosophically and logically perfect language, all philosophical problems can be solved without the muddying effects of everyday contexts; but where, precisely because of the lack of friction, language can in fact do no work at all. Wittgenstein argues that philosophers must leave the frictionless ice and return to the "rough ground" of ordinary language in use. Much of the "Investigations" consists of examples of how the first false steps can be avoided, so that philosophical problems are dissolved, rather than solved: "The clarity we are aiming at is indeed "complete" clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should "completely" disappear."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Wittgenstein's archive of unpublished papers included 83 manuscripts, 46 typescripts and 11 dictations, amounting to an estimated 20,000 pages. Choosing among repeated drafts, revisions, corrections, and loose notes, editorial work has found nearly one third of the total suitable for print. An Internet facility hosted by the University of Bergen allows access to images of almost all the material and to search the available transcriptions. In 2011, two new boxes of Wittgenstein papers, thought to have been lost during the Second World War, were found.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: What became the "Philosophical Investigations" was already close to completion in 1951. Wittgenstein's three literary executors prioritized it, both because of its intrinsic importance and because he had explicitly intended publication. The book was published in 1953.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: At least three other works were more or less finished. Two were already "bulky typescripts", the "Philosophical Remarks" and "Philosophical Grammar". Literary (co-)executor G. H. von Wright stated, "They are virtually completed works. But Wittgenstein did not publish them." The third was "Remarks on Colour". "He wrote "i.a." a fair amount on colour concepts, and this material he did excerpt and polish, reducing it to a small compass."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Bertrand Russell described Wittgenstein as perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived; passionate, profound, intense, and dominating.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: As mentioned above, in 1999 a survey among American university and college teachers ranked the "Investigations" as the most important book of 20th-century philosophy, standing out as "the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations." The "Investigations" also ranked 54th on a list of most influential twentieth-century works in cognitive science prepared by the University of Minnesota's Center for Cognitive Sciences.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Duncan J. Richter of the Virginia Military Institute, writing for the "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy", has described Wittgenstein as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, and regarded by some as the most important since Immanuel Kant." Peter Hacker argues that Wittgenstein's influence on 20th-century analytical philosophy can be attributed to his early influence on the Vienna Circle and later influence on the Oxford "ordinary language" school and Cambridge philosophers.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: But despite its deep influence on analytical philosophy, Wittgenstein's work did not always gain a positive reception. Argentine-Canadian philosopher Mario Bunge considers that "Wittgenstein is popular


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: philosophy of language is shallow because it ignores scientific linguistics. Bunge also considers Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind to be speculative because it is not informed by the scientific research performed in psychology.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: There are many diverging interpretations of Wittgenstein's thought. In the words of his friend and colleague Georg Henrik von Wright: He was of the opinion ... that his ideas were generally misunderstood and distorted even by those who professed to be his disciples. He doubted he would be better understood in the future. He once said he felt as though he was writing for people who would think in a different way, breathe a different air of life, from that of present-day men.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Since Wittgenstein's death, scholarly interpretations of his philosophy have differed. Scholars have differed on the continuity between the so-called early Wittgenstein and the so-called late(r) Wittgenstein (that is, the difference between his views expressed in the "Tractatus" and those in "Philosophical Investigations"), with some seeing the two as starkly disparate and others stressing the gradual transition between the two works through analysis of Wittgenstein's unpublished papers (the "Nachlass").


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: One significant debate in Wittgenstein scholarship concerns the work of interpreters who are referred to under the banner of The New Wittgenstein school such as Cora Diamond, Alice Crary, and James F. Conant. While the "Tractatus", particularly in its conclusion, seems paradoxical and self-undermining, New Wittgenstein scholars advance a "therapeutic" understanding of Wittgenstein's work – "an understanding of Wittgenstein as aspiring, not to advance metaphysical theories, but rather to help us work ourselves out of confusions we become entangled in when philosophizing." To support this goal, the New Wittgenstein scholars propose a reading of the "Tractatus" as "plain nonsense" – arguing it does not attempt to convey a substantive philosophical project but instead simply tries to push the reader to abandon philosophical speculation. The therapeutic approach traces its roots to the philosophical work of John Wisdom and the review of "The Blue Book" written by Oets Kolk Bouwsma.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: The therapeutic approach is not without critics: Hans-Johann Glock argues that the "plain nonsense" reading of the "Tractatus" "is at odds with the external evidence, writings and conversations in which Wittgenstein states that the "Tractatus" is committed to the idea of ineffable insight."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Hans Sluga and Rupert Read have advocated a "post-therapeutic" or "liberatory" interpretation of Wittgenstein.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: In October 1944, Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge around the same time as did Russell, who had been living in the United States for several years. Russell returned to Cambridge after a backlash in America to his writings on morals and religion. Wittgenstein said of Russell's works to Drury:Russell's books should be bound in two colours…those dealing with mathematical logic in red – and all students of philosophy should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue – and no one should be allowed to read them.Russell made similar disparaging comments about Wittgenstein's later work:I have not found in Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" anything that seemed to me interesting and I do not understand why a whole school finds important wisdom in its pages. Psychologically this is surprising. The earlier Wittgenstein, whom I knew intimately, was a man addicted to passionately intense thinking, profoundly aware of difficult problems of which I, like him, felt the importance, and possessed (or at least so I thought) of true philosophical genius. The later Wittgenstein, on the contrary, seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to have invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary. I do not for one moment believe that the doctrine which has these lazy consequences is true. I realize, however, that I have an overpoweringly strong bias against it, for, if it is true, philosophy is, at best, a slight help to lexicographers, and at worst, an idle tea-table amusement.


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Saul Kripke's 1982 book "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language" contends that the central argument of Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" is a devastating rule-following paradox that undermines the possibility of our ever following rules in our use of language. Kripke writes that this paradox is "the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date."


title: Ludwig Wittgenstein

text: Kripke's book generated a large secondary literature, divided between those who find his sceptical problem interesting and perceptive, and others, such as John McDowell, Stanley Cavell, Gordon Baker, Peter Hacker, Colin McGinn, and Peter Winch who argue that his scepticism of meaning is a pseudo-problem that stems from a confused, selective reading of Wittgenstein. Kripke's position has, however, recently been defended against these and other attacks by the Cambridge philosopher Martin Kusch (2006).


title: Honey badger

text: The honey badger (Mellivora capensis), also known as the ratel ( or ), is a mammal widely distributed in Africa, Southwest Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Because of its wide range and occurrence in a variety of habitats, it is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.


title: Honey badger

text: It is the only living species in the genus "Mellivora" and in the mustelid subfamily Mellivorinae. Despite its name, the honey badger does not closely resemble other badger species; instead, it bears more anatomical similarities to weasels. It is primarily a carnivorous species and has few natural predators because of its thick skin, strength and ferocious defensive abilities.


title: Honey badger

text: "Viverra capensis" was the scientific name used by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in 1777 who described a honey badger skin from the Cape of Good Hope. "Mellivorae" was proposed as name for the genus by Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr in 1780.


title: Honey badger

text: The honey badger is the only species of the genus "Mellivora". Although in the 1860s it was assigned to the badger subfamily, the Melinae, it is now generally agreed that it bears few similarities to the Melinae. It is much more closely related to the marten subfamily, Guloninae, and furthermore is assigned its own subfamily, Mellivorinae. Differences between Mellivorinae and Guloninae include differences in their dentition formulae. Though not in the same subfamily as the wolverines, which are a genus of large-sized and atypical Guloninae, the honey badger can be regarded as another, analogous, form of outsized weasel or polecat.


title: Honey badger

text: The species first appeared during the middle Pliocene in Asia. A number of extinct relatives are known dating back at least 7 million years to the Late Miocene. These include "Mellivora benfieldi" from South Africa and Italy, "Promellivora" from Pakistan, and "Howellictis" from Chad. More distant relatives include "Eomellivora", which evolved into several different species in both the Old and New World, and the giant, long-legged "Ekorus" from Kenya.


title: Honey badger

text: In the 19th and 20th centuries, 16 zoological specimens of the honey badger were described and proposed as subspecies.


title: Honey badger

text: , 12 subspecies are recognised as valid taxa. Points taken into consideration in assigning different subspecies include size and the extent of whiteness or greyness on the back.


title: Honey badger

text: The honey badger has a fairly long body, but is distinctly thick-set and broad across the back. Its skin is remarkably loose, and allows the animal to turn and twist freely within it. The skin around the neck is thick, an adaptation to fighting conspecifics. The head is small and flat, with a short muzzle. The eyes are small, and the ears are little more than ridges on the skin, another possible adaptation to avoiding damage while fighting.


title: Honey badger

text: The honey badger has short and sturdy legs, with five toes on each foot. The feet are armed with very strong claws, which are short on the hind legs and remarkably long on the forelimbs. It is a partially plantigrade animal whose soles are thickly padded and naked up to the wrists. The tail is short and is covered in long hairs, save for below the base.


title: Honey badger

text: Honey badgers are the largest terrestrial mustelids in Africa. Adults measure in shoulder height and in body length, with the tail adding another . Females are smaller than males. In Africa, males weigh while females weigh on average. The mean weight of adult honey badgers from different areas has been reported at anywhere between , with a median of roughly , per various studies. This positions it as the third largest known badger, after the European badger and hog badger, and fourth largest extant terrestrial mustelid after additionally the wolverine. However, the average weight of three wild females from Iraq was reported as , about the typical weight of male wolverines or male European badgers in late autumn, indicating that they can attain much larger than typical sizes in favorable conditions. However, an adult female and two males in India were relatively small, at the respective weights of and a median of . Skull length is in males and for females.


title: Honey badger

text: There are two pairs of mammae. The honey badger possesses an anal pouch which, unusual among mustelids, is eversible, a trait shared with hyenas and mongooses. The smell of the pouch is reportedly "suffocating", and may assist in calming bees when raiding beehives.


title: Honey badger

text: The skull bears little similarity to that of the European badger, and greatly resembles a larger version of that of a marbled polecat. The skull is very solidly built, with that of adults having no trace of an independent bone structure. The braincase is broader than that of dogs.


title: Honey badger

text: The dental formula is: . The teeth often display signs of irregular development, with some teeth being exceptionally small, set at unusual angles or absent altogether. Honey badgers of the subspecies "signata" have a second lower molar on the left side of their jaws, but not the right. Although it feeds predominantly on soft foods, the honey badger's cheek teeth are often extensively worn. The canine teeth are exceptionally short for carnivores. The tongue has sharp, backward-pointing papillae which assist it in processing tough foods.


title: Honey badger

text: The winter fur is long, (being long on the lower back), and consists of sparse, coarse, bristle-like hairs, with minimal underfur. Hairs are even sparser on the flanks, belly and groin. The summer fur is shorter (being only long on the back) and even sparser, with the belly being half bare. The sides of the head and lower body are pure black. A large white band covers the upper body, from the top of the head to the base of the tail. Honey badgers of the "cottoni" subspecies are unique in being completely black.


title: Honey badger

text: The honey badger is mostly solitary, but has also been sighted in Africa to hunt in pairs during the breeding season in May. It also uses old burrows of aardvark, warthog and termite mounds.


title: Honey badger

text: It is a skilled digger, able to dig tunnels into hard ground in 10 minutes. These burrows usually have only one entry, are usually only long with a nesting chamber that is not lined with any bedding.


title: Honey badger

text: The honey badger is notorious for its strength, ferocity and toughness. It is known to savagely and fearlessly attack almost any other species when escape is impossible, reportedly even repelling much larger predators such as lion and hyena. Bee stings, porcupine quills, and animal bites rarely penetrate their skin. If horses, cattle, or Cape buffalos intrude upon a honey badger's burrow, it will attack them.In the Cape Province it is a potential prey species of the African leopard. African rock pythons, Nile crocodiles and spotted hyenas also prey on honey badgers occasionally.


title: Honey badger

text: The honey badger has the least specialised diet of the weasel family next to the wolverine. It accesses a large part of its food by digging it out of burrows.


title: Honey badger

text: It often raids beehives in search of both bee larvae and honey. It also feeds on insects, frogs, tortoises, turtles, lizards, rodents, snakes, birds and eggs. It also eats berries, roots and bulbs. When foraging for vegetables, it lifts stones or tears bark from trees. Some individuals have even been observed to chase away lion cubs from kills. It devours all parts of its prey, including skin, hair, feathers, flesh and bones, holding its food down with its forepaws. It feeds on a wide range of vertebrates and seems to subsist primarily on small vertebrates. Honey badgers studied in Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park preyed largely on geckos and skinks (47.9% of prey species), gerbils and mice (39.7% of prey). The bulk of its prey comprised species weighing more than such as cobras, young African rock python and South African springhare.


title: Honey badger

text: In the Kalahari, honey badgers were also observed to attack domestic sheep and goats, as well as kill and eat black mambas. A honey badger was suspected to have broken up the shells of tent tortoises in the Nama Karoo. In India, honey badgers are said to dig up human corpses.


title: Honey badger

text: Little is known of the honey badger's breeding habits. Its gestation period is thought to last six months, usually resulting in two cubs, which are born blind. Its lifespan in the wild is unknown, though captive individuals have been known to live for approximately 24 years. The voice of the honey badger is a hoarse "khrya-ya-ya-ya" sound. When mating, males emit loud grunting sounds. Cubs vocalise through plaintive whines. When confronting dogs, honey badgers scream like bear cubs.


title: Honey badger

text: The honey badger ranges through most of sub-Saharan Africa, from the Western Cape, South Africa, to southern Morocco and southwestern Algeria and outside Africa through Arabia, Iran, and Western Asia to Turkmenistan and the Indian Peninsula. It is known to range from sea level to as much as above sea level in the Moroccan High Atlas and in Ethiopia's Bale Mountains.


title: Honey badger

text: Honey badgers often become serious poultry predators. Because of their strength and persistence, they are difficult to deter. They are known to rip thick planks from hen-houses or burrow underneath stone foundations. Surplus killing is common during these events, with one incident resulting in the death of 17 Muscovy ducks and 36 chickens.


title: Honey badger

text: Because of the toughness and looseness of their skin, honey badgers are very difficult to kill with dogs. Their skin is hard to penetrate, and its looseness allows them to twist and turn on their attackers when held. The only safe grip on a honey badger is on the back of the neck. The skin is also tough enough to resist several machete blows. The only sure way of killing them quickly is through a blow to the skull with a club or a shot to the head with a gun, as their skin is almost impervious to arrows and spears.


title: Honey badger

text: During the British occupation of Basra in 2007, rumours of "man-eating badgers" emerged from the local population, including allegations that these beasts were released by the British troops, something that the British categorically denied. A British army spokesperson said that the badgers were "native to the region but rare in Iraq" and "are usually only dangerous to humans if provoked". The director of Basra's veterinary hospital, Mushtaq Abdul-Mahdi, confirmed that honey badgers had been seen in the area as early as 1986. The deputy dean of Basra's veterinary college, Ghazi Yaqub Azzam, speculated that "the badgers were being driven towards the city because of flooding in marshland north of Basra." The event received coverage in the Western press during the 2007 silly season.


title: Honey badger

text: In Kenya, the honey badger is a major reservoir of rabies and is suspected to be a significant contributor to the sylvatic cycle of the disease.


title: Biz Stone

text: Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone (born March 10, 1974) is an American entrepreneur who is a co-founder of Twitter, among other technology companies. Stone was the creative director at Xanga from 1999 to 2001. Stone co-founded Jelly, with Ben Finkel. Jelly was launched in 2014 and was a search engine driven by visual imagery and discovery. Stone was Jelly’s CEO until its acquisition by Pinterest in 2017. On May 16, 2017, Biz Stone announced he was returning to Twitter Inc.


title: Biz Stone

text: Stone graduated from Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He attended Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts Boston, but did not graduate from either.


title: Biz Stone

text: Aside from Twitter, Stone is an angel investor and advisor in the startup community having backed companies in diverse industries such as Square, Slack, Medium, Nest, Beyond Meat, Pinterest, Intercom, and Faraday. Stone is a board director at Beyond Meat, Medium, Polaroid Swing, Workpop, and Jelly Industries. Stone is Chairman of Polaroid Swing.


title: Biz Stone

text: Stone made his directorial debut working alongside Ron Howard and Canon USA to direct a short film, Evermore, as a part of Project Imaginat10n. Stone described the opportunity as a chance to scratch a long-time creative itch. Stone is also an advisor to Zoic Studios, and an Executive Producer of the documentary "Eating Animals" along with Natalie Portman.


title: Biz Stone

text: Stone has been honored with the International Center for Journalists Innovation Award, "Inc." magazine named him Entrepreneur of the Decade, "Time" listed him as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, and "GQ" named him Nerd of the Year, along with Evan Williams. In 2014, "The Economist" recognized Stone with an Innovation Award.


title: Biz Stone

text: In 2015, Stone’s Twitter won an Emmy and Stone received CIPR's most prestigious accolade for leadership at the forefront of developing new forms of media.


title: Biz Stone

text: Stone is a visiting fellow at Oxford University and a member of the Senior Common Room at Exeter College, Oxford. Upon delivering the 2011 commencement, Babson College awarded Stone their highest honorary degree, a Doctor of Laws. and is a Fellow at Oxford University. Stone is an Executive Fellow at University of California, Berkeley.


title: Biz Stone

text: Stone has published three books, "Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content" (New Riders, 2002), "Who Let The Blogs Out?" (St Martins, 2004),[19] and "Things A Little Bird Told Me" (Grand Central, 2014). In addition to his long running personal blog and Medium articles, Stone has published op-eds for "The Atlantic" and "The Times".


title: Biz Stone

text: Stone is an active philanthropist, and is involved in causes including animal rights, veganism, environmentalism, poverty, health and education. Stone is an advisor and contributor to DonorsChoose, a nonprofit organization helping classrooms in need.


title: Biz Stone

text: Stone lives in Marin County, California, with his wife Livia and his son Jacob. He and his wife founded and operate the Biz and Livia Stone Foundation, which supports education and conservation in California.


title: Monte Carlo

text: Monte Carlo (; ; , or colloquially "Monte-Carl" ; ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is located. Informally, the name also refers to a larger district, the Monte Carlo Quarter (corresponding to the former municipality of Monte Carlo), which besides Monte Carlo/Spélugues also includes the wards of La Rousse/Saint Roman, Larvotto/Bas Moulins and Saint Michel. The permanent population of the ward of Monte Carlo is about 3,500, while that of the quarter is about 15,000. Monaco has four traditional quarters. From west to east they are: Fontvieille (the newest), Monaco-Ville (the oldest), La Condamine, and Monte Carlo.


title: Monte Carlo

text: Monte Carlo is situated on a prominent escarpment at the base of the Maritime Alps along the French Riviera. Near the quarter's western end is the "world-famous Place du Casino, the gambling center ... that has made Monte Carlo an international byword for the extravagant display and reckless dispersal of wealth". It is also the location of the Hôtel de Paris, Café de Paris and Salle Garnier (the casino theatre which is the home of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo). The quarter's eastern part includes the community of Larvotto with Monaco's only public beach, as well as its new convention center (the Grimaldi Forum), and the Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort. At the quarter's eastern border, one crosses into the French town of Beausoleil (sometimes referred to as Monte-Carlo-Supérieur), and to its east is the western border of Italy.


title: Monte Carlo

text: In 1856, Charles III of Monaco granted a concession to Napoleon Langlois and Albert Aubert, to establish a sea-bathing facility for the treatment of various diseases, and to build a German-style casino.


title: Monte Carlo

text: The initial casino opened in La Condamine in 1862, but was unsuccessful. It relocated several times, before reaching its present location in the "Les Spélugues" (The Caves) area of Monte Carlo. Success came slowly, largely because Monaco was inaccessible from much of Europe. The railway, installed in 1868, brought with it an influx of people, and Monte Carlo grew in wealth.


title: Monte Carlo

text: Saint-Charles Church on Monte Carlo's Avenue Sainte-Charles was completed in 1883. It was restored in its centenary year.


title: Monte Carlo

text: The municipality of Monte Carlo was created in 1911, when the Constitution divided the principality of Monaco into three municipalities. Monte Carlo encompassed the existing neighborhoods of La Rousse/Saint Roman, Larvotto/Bas Moulins, and Saint Michel. The municipalities merged in 1917, after accusations that the government used them to "divide and conquer". Since then, they are wards (quartiers). Today, Monaco is divided into 10 wards, with an eleventh planned (but currently postponed) to encompass land reclaimed from the sea (see the "Administrative divisions" section of Monaco for additional details).


title: Monte Carlo

text: The quarter of Monte Carlo was served by tramways from 1898 to 1931. It linked all parts of Monaco (see transportation in Monaco). In 2003 a new cruise ship pier was completed in the harbour at Monte Carlo.


title: Monte Carlo

text: Monte Carlo has an area of 28.14 hectares (or 0.28 square kilometers) and faces the Mediterranean Sea, bordered on the west by Moneghetti and La Condamine, on the north by Saint Michel and on the east by La Rousse and Larvotto.


title: Monte Carlo

text: Monte Carlo has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: Csa), which is influenced by oceanic climate and humid subtropical climate. As a result, it has warm, dry summers and mild, rainy winters.


title: Monte Carlo

text: Monte Carlo is host to most of the Circuit de Monaco, on which the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix takes place. It also hosts world championship boxing bouts, the European Poker Tour Grand Final and the World Backgammon Championship as well as the Monaco International Auto Show (Fr: Salon International de l'Automobile de Monaco), fashion shows and other events. Although the Monte Carlo Masters tennis tournament is billed as taking place in the community, its actual location is in the adjacent French commune of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. The Monte Carlo Rally is one of the longest running and most respected car rallies; from 1973 to 2008 and again from 2012, it marks the start of World Rally Championship season, having also served as the curtain-raiser for the Intercontinental Rally Challenge between 2009 and 2011. The rally, however, takes place outside the Monte Carlo quarter and is run mostly on French roads.


title: Monte Carlo

text: Monte Carlo has been visited by royalty as well as the public and movie stars for decades. Monte Carlo is one of Europe's leading tourist resorts, although many of the key tourist destinations are in other parts of Monaco, including such attractions as Monaco Cathedral, the Napoleon Museum, the Oceanographic Museum and aquarium, and the Prince's Palace, all of which are in Monaco-Ville.


title: Monte Carlo

text: The Opéra de Monte-Carlo or Salle Garnier was built to designs of the architect Charles Garnier, who also designed the Paris opera house now known as the Palais Garnier. Although much smaller, the Salle Garnier is very similar in style with decorations in red and gold, and frescoes and sculptures all around the auditorium. It was inaugurated on 25 January 1879 with a performance by Sarah Bernhardt dressed as a nymph. The first opera performed there was Robert Planquette's "Le Chevalier Gaston" on 8 February 1879, and that was followed by three more in the first season.


title: Monte Carlo

text: Other famous twentieth-century singers to appear at Monte Carlo included Titta Ruffo, Geraldine Farrar, Mary Garden, Tito Schipa, Beniamino Gigli, Claudia Muzio, Georges Thill, and Lily Pons.


title: Monte Carlo

text: The Hôtel de Paris, established in 1864 by Charles III of Monaco, is located on the west side of the Place du Casino in the heart of Monte Carlo. It belongs to the Société des bains de mer de Monaco (SBM), and is part of the elite Palace Grand Hotels in Monaco with the Hotel Hermitage, the Monte-Carlo Beach Hotel, Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort, the Hotel Metropole and Fairmont hotel.


title: Monte Carlo

text: The hotel has 106 rooms divided into four groups based on type of view, decoration and luxury. The Exclusive City View offers 20 rooms, the Superior Courtyard has 29 large rooms, the Exclusive Sea View 59 and the Exclusive Casino has six.


title: Monte Carlo

text: Additionally, there are 74 suites and junior suites which are grouped similarly, offering more luxury than the rooms. There are single and double suites as well as courtyard junior suites and Sea/Casino Junior suites. There is also one Presidential suite.


title: Monte Carlo

text: In October 2014, a renovation project began, to create a garden courtyard, add a new spa, fitness and pool area, exceptional suites, and a “rooftop villa” with a private garden and pool.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was an American actor. He was known for his natural performing style and versatility. One of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tracy was the first actor to win two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor from nine nominations. During his career, he appeared in 75 films and developed a reputation among his peers as one of the screen's greatest actors. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Tracy as the 9th greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy first discovered his talent for acting while attending Ripon College, and he later received a scholarship for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He spent seven years in the theatre, working in a succession of stock companies and intermittently on Broadway. His breakthrough came in 1930, when his lead performance in "The Last Mile" caught the attention of Hollywood. After a successful film debut in John Ford's "Up the River" (in which he starred with Humphrey Bogart), he was signed to a contract with Fox Film Corporation. Tracy's five years with Fox featured one acting "tour de force" after another that were usually ignored at the box office, and he remained largely unknown to movie audiences after 25 films, nearly all of them starring him as the leading man. None of them were hits, although his performance in "The Power and the Glory" (1933) was highly praised at the time.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: In 1935, he joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), at the time Hollywood's most prestigious studio. His career flourished from his fifth MGM film "Fury" (1936) onwards, and in 1937 and 1938 he won consecutive Oscars for "Captains Courageous" and "Boys Town". He teamed with Clark Gable, the studio's most prominent leading man for three major box office successes, so that by the early 1940s Tracy was one of MGM's top stars. In 1942, he appeared with Katharine Hepburn in "Woman of the Year", beginning a professional and personal partnership, which led to nine films over 25 years. In 1955, Tracy won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film "Bad Day at Black Rock".


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy left MGM in 1955, and continued to work regularly as a freelance star, despite several health issues and an increasing weariness and irritability as he aged. His personal life was troubled, with a lifelong struggle against severe alcoholism and guilt over his son's deafness. Tracy and his wife Louise became estranged in the 1930s, but the couple never divorced; his 25-year long relationship with Katharine Hepburn was an open secret. Towards the end of his life, Tracy worked almost exclusively for director Stanley Kramer. It was for Kramer that he made his last film, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967), completed just 17 days before he died.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was born in Milwaukee on April 5, 1900, the second son of Caroline (; 1874–1942) and truck salesman John Edward Tracy (1873–1928). His mother was from a wealthy, Presbyterian, Midwestern family, while his father was of Irish Catholic descent. He had a brother Carroll, who was four years older.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy was a difficult and hyperactive child  with poor school attendance. Raised Catholic, he was placed in the care of Dominican Order nuns at the age of nine in an attempt to transform his behavior. Later in life, he remarked that he "never would have gone back to school if there had been any other way of learning to read the subtitles in the movies". He became fascinated with movies, watching the same ones repeatedly and later re-enacting scenes to his friends and neighbors. He attended several Jesuit academies in his teenage years, which he claimed took the "badness" out of him and helped him improve his grades.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: At Marquette Academy, he began attending plays with lifelong friend and fellow actor Pat O'Brien, awakening his interest in the theatre. With little care for their studies and "itching for a chance to go and see some excitement", Tracy and O'Brien enlisted in the Navy together when Tracy turned 18. They were sent to the Naval Training Station in northern Illinois, where they were still students when World War I came to an end. Tracy achieved the rank of seaman second class, but never went to sea and was discharged in February 1919. His father's desire to see one of his sons gain a college degree drove Tracy back to high school to finish his diploma. Studies at two more institutions, plus the additional allowance of "war credits", won Tracy a place at Ripon College. He entered in February 1921, declaring his intention to major in medicine.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy was a popular student at Ripon, where he served as president of his hall and was involved in a number of college activities. He made his stage debut in June 1921, playing the male lead in "The Truth". He was very well received in the role and quickly developed a passion for the stage; he was reportedly "obsessive about acting to the degree that he talked about little else". He and some friends formed an acting company called the Campus Players, which they took on tour. As a member of the college debate team, Tracy excelled in arguing and public speaking. It was during a tour with the debate team that he auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) in New York City. He was offered a scholarship to attend the school after performing a scene from one of his earlier roles.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy left Ripon and began classes at AADA in April 1922. O'Brien was also enrolled there and the two shared a small studio apartment. Money was scarce, and the two often lived on meals of rice and pretzels and shared one decent suit between them. Tracy was deemed fit to progress to the senior class, allowing him to join the academy's stock company. He made his New York debut in a play called "The Wedding Guests", which opened in October 1922. He made his debut Broadway appearance three months later, playing a wordless robot in "R.U.R." He graduated from AADA in March 1923.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Immediately following graduation, Tracy joined a new stock company based in White Plains, New York where he was given peripheral roles. Unhappy there, he moved to a company in Cincinnati, but failed to make an impact. In November 1923, he landed a small part on Broadway in the comedy "A Royal Fandango", starring Ethel Barrymore. Reviews for the show were poor and it closed after 25 performances; Tracy later said of the failure, "My ego took an awful beating." When he took a position with a struggling company in New Jersey, Tracy was living on an allowance of 35 cents a day. In January 1924, he played his first leading role with a company in Winnipeg, but the organization soon closed.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy finally achieved some success by joining forces with the notable stock manager William H. Wright in the spring of 1924. A stage partnership was formed with the young actress Selena Royle, who had already made her name on Broadway. It proved a popular draw and their productions were favorably received. One of these performances brought Tracy to the attention of a Broadway producer, who offered him the lead in a new play. "The Sheepman" previewed in October 1925, but it received poor reviews and closed after its trial run in Connecticut. Dejected, Tracy was forced back to Wright and the stock circuit.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: In the fall of 1926, Tracy was offered his third shot at Broadway: a role in a new George M. Cohan play called "Yellow". Tracy swore that if the play failed to be a hit he would leave stock and work in a "regular" business instead. Tracy was nervous about working with Cohan, one of the most important figures in American theatre, but during rehearsals Cohan announced, "Tracy, you're the best goddamned actor I've ever seen!" "Yellow" opened on September 21; reviews were mixed but it ran for 135 performances. It was the beginning of an important collaboration for Tracy: "I'd have quit the stage completely," he later commented, "if it hadn't been for George M. Cohan." Cohan wrote a part specifically for Tracy in his next play, "The Baby Cyclone". It opened on Broadway in September 1927 and was a hit.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy followed this success with another Cohan play, "Whispering Friends", and in 1929 took over from Clark Gable in "Conflict", a Broadway drama. Other roles followed, but it was the lead in "Dread", written by Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Owen Davis that gave Tracy high hopes for success. The story of a man's descent into madness, "Dread" previewed in Brooklyn to an excellent reception, but on the next day—October 29—the New York stock market crashed. Unable to obtain funding, "Dread" did not open on Broadway. Following this disappointment, Tracy again considered leaving the theatre and returning to Milwaukee for a more stable life.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: In January 1930, Tracy was approached about a new play called "The Last Mile". Looking to cast the lead role of a murderer on death row, producer Herman Shumlin met with Tracy, and later recounted: "beneath the surface, here was a man of passion, violence, sensitivity and desperation: no ordinary man, and just the man for the part." "The Last Mile" opened on Broadway in February, where Tracy's performance was met by a standing ovation that lasted 14 curtain calls. The "Commonweal" described him as "one of our best and most versatile young actors". The play was a hit with critics, and ran for 289 performances.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: In 1930, Broadway was being scouted to find actors to work in the new medium of sound films. Tracy was cast in two Vitaphone shorts ("Taxi Talks" and "The Hard Guy"), but he had not considered becoming a film actor: "I had no ambition in that direction and I was perfectly happy on the stage", he later explained in an interview. One person who saw Tracy in "The Last Mile" was director John Ford.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Ford wanted Tracy for the lead role in his next picture, a prison movie. Production company Fox Film Corporation was unsure about Tracy, saying that he did not photograph well, but Ford convinced them that he was right for the role. "Up the River" (1930) marked the film debut of both Tracy and Humphrey Bogart. After seeing the rushes, Fox immediately offered Tracy a long-term contract. Knowing that he needed the money for his family, with his young son deaf and recovering from polio, Tracy signed with Fox and moved to California. He appeared on the stage only once more in his life.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Winfield Sheehan, the head of Fox, committed to making Tracy a bankable commodity. The studio promoted the actor, releasing ads for his second film "Quick Millions" (1931) with the headline "A New Star Shines". Three films were made in quick succession, all of which were unsuccessful at the box office. Tracy found himself typecast in comedies, usually playing a crook or a con man. The mold was broken with his seventh picture, "Disorderly Conduct" (1932), and it was the first of his films since "Up the River" to return a profit.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: In mid-1932, after nine pictures, Tracy remained virtually unknown to the public. He considered leaving Fox once his contract was up for renewal, but a rise in his weekly rate to $1,500 convinced him to stay. He continued to appear in unpopular films, with "Me and My Gal" (1932) setting an all-time low attendance record for the Roxy Theatre in New York City. He was loaned to Warner Bros. for "20,000 Years in Sing Sing" (1932), a prison drama co-starring Bette Davis. Tracy was hopeful that it would be his break-out role, but despite good reviews, this failed to materialize.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Critics began to notice Tracy with "The Power and the Glory" (1933). The story of a man's rise to prosperity had a screenplay by Preston Sturges and Tracy's performance as railroad tycoon Tom Garner received uniformly strong reviews. William Wilkerson of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote: "This sterling performer has finally been given an opportunity to show an ability that has been boxed in by gangster roles ... [the film] has introduced Mr. Tracy as one of the screen's best performers". Mordaunt Hall of "The New York Times" stated: "No more convincing performance has been given on the screen than Spencer Tracy's impersonation of Tom Garner." "Shanghai Madness" (1933), meanwhile, revealed Tracy to have a previously unseen sex appeal and served to advance his standing. Despite this attention, Tracy's next two movies went largely unnoticed. "Man's Castle" (1933) with Loretta Young was anticipated to be a hit, but made only a small profit. "The Show-Off" (1934), for which he was lent to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, proved popular, but his subsequent outings continued to be unsuccessful.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy drank heavily during his years with Fox and gained a reputation as an alcoholic. He failed to report for filming on "Marie Galante" in June 1934, and was found in his hotel room, virtually unconscious after a two-week binge. Tracy was removed from the Fox payroll while he recovered in a hospital, and then sued for $125,000 for delaying the production. He completed only two more pictures with the studio.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: The details on how Tracy's relationship with Fox ended are unclear: later in life Tracy maintained that he was fired for his drunken behavior, but the Fox records do not support such an account. He was still under contract with the studio when MGM expressed their interest in the actor. They were in need of a new male star, and contacted Tracy on April 2, 1935, offering him a seven-year deal. That afternoon, the contract between Tracy and Fox was terminated "by mutual consent". Tracy made a total of 25 pictures in the five years he was with Fox Film Corporation, most of which lost money at the box office.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: In the 1930s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the most respected movie production studio in Hollywood. When Tracy arrived there, he was all but unknown. Biographer James Curtis writes: "Tracy was scarcely a blip on the box office barometer in 1935, a critics' darling and little more". He was, however, well known for being a troublemaker. Producer Irving Thalberg was nevertheless enthusiastic about working with the actor, telling journalist Louella Parsons: "Spencer Tracy will become one of MGM's most valuable stars."


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Curtis notes that the studio managed Tracy with care, a welcome change from the ineptitude and apathy he had known while at Fox, which was like "a shot of adrenaline" for the actor. His first film under the new contract was the quickly produced "The Murder Man" (1935), which included the feature film debut of James Stewart. Thalberg then began a strategy of pairing Tracy with the studio's top actresses: "Whipsaw" (1935) co-starred Myrna Loy and was a commercial success. "Riffraff" (1936) put Tracy opposite Jean Harlow. Both films were, however, designed and promoted to showcase their leading ladies, thus continuing Tracy's reputation as a secondary star.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: "Fury" (1936) was the first film to prove that Tracy could make a success on his own merit. Directed by Fritz Lang, Tracy played an innocent man who swears revenge after narrowly escaping death by a lynch mob. The film and performance received excellent reviews. It made a profit of $1.3 million worldwide. Curtis writes: "audiences who, just a year earlier, had no clear handle on him, were suddenly turning out to see him. It was a transition that was nothing short of miraculous ... [and showed] a willingness on the part of the public to embrace a leading man who was not textbook handsome nor bigger than life."


title: Spencer Tracy

text: "Fury" was followed one month later with the release of the big-budget disaster movie "San Francisco" (1936). Tracy played a supporting role alongside Clark Gable in the film, allowing audiences to see him with the top male star in Hollywood. Taking on the role of a priest, Tracy reportedly felt a heavy responsibility in representing the church. Despite having only 17 minutes of screen time, Tracy was highly praised for his performance and received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. "San Francisco" became the highest-grossing picture of 1936. Donald Deschner, in his book on Tracy, credits "Fury" and "San Francisco" as the "two films that changed his career and gave him the status of a major star".


title: Spencer Tracy

text: By this point, Tracy entered a period of self-imposed sobriety and MGM expressed pleasure with Tracy's professionalism. His public reputation continued to grow with "Libeled Lady" (also 1936), a screwball comedy that cast him with William Powell, Loy and Harlow. According to Curtis, "Powell, Harlow and Loy were among the biggest draws in the industry, and equal billing in such a powerhouse company could only serve to advance Tracy's standing". "Libeled Lady" was his third hit picture in the space of six months.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy appeared in four films released in 1937. "They Gave Him a Gun", a crime-drama, went largely unnoticed, but "Captains Courageous" was one of the major film events of the year. Tracy played a Portuguese fisherman in the adventure movie, based on the novel by Rudyard Kipling. He was uncomfortable feigning a foreign accent, and resented having his hair curled, but the role was a hit with audiences and Tracy won the Academy Award for Best Actor. "Captains Courageous" was followed by "Big City" with Luise Rainer and "Mannequin" with Joan Crawford, the latter of which performed well at the box office. With two years of hit movies and industry recognition, Tracy became a star in the United States. A 1937 poll of 20 million people to find the "King and Queen of Hollywood" ranked Tracy sixth among males.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy was reunited with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy for "Test Pilot" (1938). The film was another enormous commercial and critical success, permanently cementing the notion of Gable and Tracy as a team in the public imagination.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Based on the positive response he had received in "San Francisco", MGM again cast Tracy as a priest in "Boys Town" (also 1938). Portraying Edward J. Flanagan, a Catholic priest and founder of Boys Town in Nebraska, was a role Tracy took seriously: "I'm so anxious to do a good job as Father Flanagan that it worries me, keeps me awake at night." Tracy received strong reviews for his performance, and the movie grossed $4 million worldwide. For the second year running, Tracy received an Academy Award for Best Actor. He was humble about the recognition, saying in his acceptance speech: "I honestly do not feel that I can accept this award ... I can accept it only as it was meant to be for a great man—Father Flanagan". Although he did keep his Oscar, a second statuette was struck and immediately sent to Flanagan. Tracy was listed as the fifth biggest box office star of 1938.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy was absent from screens for almost a year before returning to Fox on loan and appearing as Henry M. Stanley in "Stanley and Livingstone" (1939) with Nancy Kelly. Curtis maintains that Tracy's non-visibility did little to affect his standing with the public or exhibitors. In October 1939, a "Fortune" magazine survey of the nation's favorite movie actors listed Tracy in first place.


title: Spencer Tracy

text: MGM capitalized on Tracy's popularity, casting him in four movies for 1940. "I Take This Woman" with Hedy Lamarr was a critical and commercial failure, but the historical drama "Northwest Passage"—Tracy's first film in Technicolor—proved popular. He then portrayed Thomas Edison in "Edison, the Man". Howard Barnes of the "New York Herald Tribune" was not charmed by the story, but wrote that Tracy, "by sheer persuasion of his acting", made the film worthy. "Boom Town" was the third and final Gable-Tracy picture, also starring Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lamarr, making it one of the most anticipated films of the year. The film opened to the biggest crowd since "Gone With the Wind".


title: Spencer Tracy

text: Tracy signed a new contract with MGM in April 1941, which paid $5,000 a week and limited him to three pictures a year (Tracy had previously expressed a need to reduce his workload). The contract also stated for the first time that his billing was to be "that of a star". Contrary to popular belief, the contract did not include a clause that he receive top billing, but from this point onward, every film Tracy appeared in featured his name in pole position.