Alan Turing tribute at Bletchley Park. Photo: Tom Morris

“Every morning I would sit down before a blank sheet of paper. Throughout the day, with a brief interval for lunch, I would stare at the blank sheet. Often when evening came it was still empty… . [T]he two summers of 1903 and 1904 remain in my mind as a period of complete intellectual deadlock… . [I]t seemed quite likely that the whole of the rest of my life might be consumed in looking at that blank sheet of paper.”

That is from Bertrand Russell’s autobiography. What was stumping him was the attempt to find a definition of “number” in...

 

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