90-458: Frank Ramsey may refer to: Frank Ramsey (mathematician) (1903–1930), English mathematician, philosopher, and economist Frank Ramsey (basketball) (1931–2018), American basketball Hall of Famer See also [ edit ] Frank William Ramsay (1875–1954), senior British Army officer in World War I [REDACTED] Topics referred to by
180-466: A beachhead by spraying an existing building with pykrete liquid that would freeze into a thick layer. Many of these ideas relied upon a misplaced faith in the qualities of supercooled water which he thought could be used as a weapon of war: pumped from a ship it could be used to instantly form bulwarks of ice or even be sprayed directly onto enemy soldiers. However, such ideas were according to Max Perutz , impractical. In September 1943, Pyke proposed
270-683: A motorcycle sidecar to carry medical supplies or a patient. He raised funds to pay for American-built Harley-Davidson motorcycles that were then plentifully available second-hand, and persuaded workers to make the sidecars free of charge with the results being sent out to Spain. Pyke also assisted in arranging for the manufacture of mattresses for the Spanish government, for the collection of redundant horse-drawn ploughs for Spanish farmers, and bundles of hand-tools for use by labourers. He published aggressive propaganda brochures pointing out that British workers were not to consider their contributions
360-425: A public school mainly for the sons of Army officers. At his mother's insistence, Pyke maintained the dress and habits of an Orthodox Jew . He became an atheist when he was thirteen. The persecution he suffered instilled in him a hatred of and contempt for " The Establishment ". After two years at Wellington, he was withdrawn, tutored privately and then admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge , to study law. At
450-416: A reliabilist theory of knowledge. He also produced what philosopher Alan Hájek has described as an "enormously influential version of the subjective interpretation of probability." His thought in this area was outlined in the paper Truth and Probability (discussed below) which was written in 1926 but first published posthumously in 1931. Keynes and Pigou encouraged Ramsey to work on economics as "From
540-459: A cautious endorsement to the idea, adding that it would require a great deal of investigation. Pyke's idea was similar to the cleaning brushes that are sometimes forced along pipes by the pressure of the fluid and to the pipeline pigs which today are used for cleaning and telemetry. Pyke then proposed that his idea for "Power-Driven Rivers" could be extended to the transport of personnel. The pipes would need to be at least two feet in diameter and
630-668: A commercial success; it was visited by many educationists and it was the subject of a film documentary. Pyke had ambitious plans for the school and began to interfere with the day-to-day running, whereupon Susan Isaacs left The Maltings. In 1927, Pyke lost all his money and became bankrupt . The Malting House School was forced to close, Margaret Pyke had to take a job as a headmistress's secretary; she left Geoffrey although they were never divorced. Already suffering from periodic fits of depression and burdened with huge debts to his brokers, he withdrew from normal life altogether and survived on donations from close friends. In 1934, Pyke opposed
720-494: A false passport, and was soon arrested and interned. During the Second World War , Pyke proposed the newly invented material, pykrete , for the construction of the ship Habakkuk . Pyke's father, Lionel Edward Pyke , was a Jewish lawyer who died when Pyke was only five, leaving his family with no money. His mother quarrelled with relatives and made life "hell" for her children. She sent Pyke to Wellington , then
810-586: A form of charity while Spanish people were fighting and dying for their fellow workers. To answer a shortage of bandages and dressings in Spain, he suggested that sun-dried peat moss sewn into muslin bags could be used as a substitute for cotton dressings. Soon, moss collected by volunteers in Britain was on its way to Spain. In 1939, before the outbreak of the Second World War , Pyke considered
900-476: A hierarchy of types was sufficient to deal with mathematical paradoxes , so removed Russell's and Whitehead's ramified hierarchy, which was meant to elude semantic paradoxes. Ramsey's version of the theory is the one considered by Kurt Gödel in the original proof of his first incompleteness theorem . Ramsey's Theory of Simple Types was further simplified by Willard van Orman Quine in his New Foundations for set theory , in which any explicit reference to types
990-455: A hut and hid under tennis nets, using glare from the sunset to blind the patrolling guard. Successful, they waited until dark and climbed over the perimeter fences. Pyke and Falk took a tram into Berlin, buying clothes and camping equipment and then traveled west. Within 80 miles (130 km) of the Dutch border, they decided to walk, traversing barbed wire fences and quagmire . Approaching
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#17327946242611080-747: A journey to Austria to visit Wittgenstein, at that time teaching in a primary school in the small community of Puchberg am Schneeberg . For two weeks Ramsey discussed the difficulties he was facing in understanding the Tractatus . Wittgenstein made some corrections to the English translation in Ramsey's copy and some annotations and changes to the German text that subsequently appeared in the second edition in 1933. Ramsey and John Maynard Keynes cooperated to try to bring Wittgenstein back to Cambridge (he had been
1170-490: A man is utterly without occupation, make life one continual aching weary desire. If the desire is not satisfied, or does not abate of its own accord (as it very often does), it can have disastrous effects on a man's mind. It has been known to make men think very seriously about the rights of property, and a few have become so unbalanced as to become socialists. During confinement, Pyke longed for books, writing material and socialising. When allowed out for exercise, he moved around
1260-493: A memoir of his experiences, To Ruhleben – And Back , and published in 1916. Because the war was still on at that time, Pyke omitted some details of his escape from his account. To Ruhleben – And Back was republished in 2002. In March 1918, Pyke met Margaret Amy Chubb , they were married within three months of meeting. Between the First and Second World Wars, Pyke attempted a number of money-making schemes, speculating on
1350-467: A memorandum, nearly fifty pages long, explaining his ideas for a solution to the problem of unloading stores from ships where no proper port facilities are available and few roads inland. This circumstance was common in the Pacific War theatre and fundamental to the 1943 decision to invade France by landing on the beaches of Normandy, with no harbours and a 24-foot tide. Pyke's idea was to use pipes of
1440-413: A one-sector economy (1928). The economist Paul Samuelson described them in 1970 as "three great legacies – legacies that were for the most part mere by-products of his major interest in the foundations of mathematics and knowledge." Ramsey's economic views were socialist . In A Treatise on Probability (1921), Keynes argued against the subjective approach in epistemic probabilities. For Keynes,
1530-535: A period of quarantine before being transferred to the internment camp at Ruhleben . Five days later, he was transferred to a third prison in Moabit , and then to the internment camp at Ruhleben. At Ruhleben, Pyke met fellow graduates from Oxford and Cambridge . They supplied him with extra clothes, food, books and other amenities. Pyke soon became ill and he nearly died of double pneumonia and food poisoning, but recovered in summer. Despite illness, he thought about
1620-576: A report for the War Office . Pyke tried to generate interest in his opinion poll results and in repeating the exercise in Germany using people from neutral countries. He got little support, but did attract the attention of Conservative Member of Parliament Leo Amery . Amery did think that Pyke's idea was worthwhile and privately convinced others including Clement Attlee and Sir Stafford Cripps . Pyke's friends concluded that nothing would come of
1710-431: A slightly less ambitious plan for pykrete vessels to be used in support of an amphibious assault . He proposed a pykrete monitor 200 feet (61 m) long and 50 feet (15 m) wide mounting a single naval gun turret ; this could be self-powered or towed to where it would be used. He also suggested the use of pykrete to make breakwaters and landing stages. At the time, Max Perutz thought the ideas were practical and that
1800-715: A student there before World War I). Once Wittgenstein had returned to Cambridge, Ramsey became his nominal supervisor. Wittgenstein submitted the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as his doctoral thesis. G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell acted as examiners. Later, the three of them arranged financial aid for Wittgenstein to help him continue his research work. In 1929 Ramsey and Wittgenstein regularly discussed issues in mathematics and philosophy with Piero Sraffa , an Italian economist who had been brought to Cambridge by Keynes after Sraffa had aroused Benito Mussolini 's ire by publishing an article critical of
1890-506: A very early age, about sixteen I think, his precocious mind was intensely interested in economic problems" (Keynes, 1933). Ramsey responded to Keynes's urging by writing three papers in economic theory all of which were of fundamental importance, though it was many years before they received their proper recognition by the community of economists. Ramsey's three papers, described below in detail, were on subjective probability and utility (1926), optimal taxation (1927) and optimal growth in
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#17327946242611980-527: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Frank Ramsey (mathematician) Frank Plumpton Ramsey ( / ˈ r æ m z i / ; 22 February 1903 – 19 January 1930) was a British philosopher , mathematician , and economist who made major contributions to all three fields before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein and, as an undergraduate, translated Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into English. He
2070-403: Is eliminated from the language of the theory. His main philosophical works included Universals (1925), Facts and propositions (1927) (which proposed a redundancy theory of truth ), Universals of law and of fact (1928), Knowledge (1929), Theories (1929), On Truth (1929), Causal Qualities (1929), and General propositions and causality (1929). Ramsey was perhaps the first to propose
2160-452: Is not only this country but the whole world which, as compared with knowledge of other natural phenomena, lacks knowledge of snow and ice. This is fortunate, for whoever gets there first may get a great advantage. In September 1942, Pyke sent a 232-page memorandum to Mountbatten detailing his ideas. It suggested a number of uses for ice and for super cooled water (water that has been cooled below its freezing point while remaining liquid) and
2250-430: Is not related to a disembodied body of knowledge but is related to the knowledge that each individual possesses alone. Thus personal beliefs that are formulated by this individual knowledge govern probabilities, leading to the notions of subjective probability and Bayesian probability . Consequently, subjective probabilities can be inferred by observing actions that reflect individuals' personal beliefs. Ramsey argued that
2340-483: Is not the case. Pyke was not the first to suggest a floating mid-ocean stopping point for aircraft, nor the first to suggest that such a floating island could be made of ice, German scientist Dr. A. Gerke of Waldenburg in Germany proposed the idea and carried out some preliminary experiments in Lake Zurich in 1930. Pyke's memorandum included a couple of cover notes. The first requested that Mountbatten should read
2430-523: Is the work Ramsey is probably best remembered for, he proved it only in passing, as a minor lemma along the way to his true goal in the paper, solving a special case of the decision problem for first-order logic , namely the decidability of what is now called the Bernays–Schönfinkel–Ramsey class of first-order logic , as well as a characterisation of the spectrum of sentences in this fragment of logic. Alonzo Church would go on to show that
2520-534: The Cambridge Magazine , edited by Charles Kay Ogden . Pyke arranged for some food parcels to be sent to friends in Ruhleben; the boxes contained details of his method of escape concealed in false bottoms. Although his parcels arrived, no prisoner attempted to repeat his methods. As an escaped prisoner of war, he was exempt from conscription and his views had begun to drift towards pacifism. He wrote
2610-619: The Foreign Office , Pyke recalled all his agents and they arrived back in England over the following few days. Pyke's original idea had been to present Hitler with an account of the true feelings of the German people, but this did not materialise with the outbreak of war. Raleigh and Patrick Smith did make a broadcast on the newly formed BBC World Service in which they contrasted the mood in Germany with that in London, and Pyke prepared
2700-588: The M29 vehicle. In April 1942, Pyke was presented with the problem of how to prevent the icing of ships in Arctic waters. He took the problem to Max Perutz at the Cavendish Laboratory , Cambridge ; Pyke knew that Perutz had previously worked on the physical properties of snow with regard to the difficulties of Operation Plough. Perutz proposed a solution and in a footnote his memorandum noted that: It
2790-715: The University of Cambridge . In 1999, the philosopher Donald Davidson gave the name "the Ramsey Effect" to anyone's realisation that their splendid new philosophical discovery already existed within Frank Ramsey's body of work. Geoffrey Pyke Geoffrey Nathaniel Joseph Pyke (9 November 1893 – 21 February 1948) was an English journalist , educationalist , and inventor . Pyke came to public attention when he escaped from internment in Germany during World War I . He had travelled to Germany under
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2880-533: The University of Pittsburgh . This collection contains only a few letters but a great many drafts of papers and book chapters, some still unpublished. Other papers, including his diary and letters and memoirs by his widow Lettice Ramsey and his father, are held in the Modern Archives, King's College, Cambridge. One of the theorems proved by Ramsey in his 1928 paper On a Problem of Formal Logic now bears his name ( Ramsey's theorem ). While this theorem
2970-402: The calculus of variations " to determine the optimal amount an economy should invest rather than consume so as to maximise future utility , or as Ramsey put it, "how much of its income should a nation save?" Keynes described the article as "one of the most remarkable contributions to mathematical economics ever made, both in respect of the intrinsic importance and difficulty of its subject,
3060-423: The commodity market , using his own system of financial management and working through a number of different stockbrokers to avoid attention and higher stock broking charges. The Pykes had a son, David Pyke (1921–2001), and Pyke became preoccupied by the question of his son's education. In October 1924, to create an education that differed from his own and promoted curiosity whilst equipping young people to live in
3150-464: The invasion of Norway , Pyke considered the problem of transporting soldiers rapidly over snow. He proposed the development of a screw-propelled vehicle based on an old patent called the Armstead snow motor. This consisted of a pair of lightweight cylinders, shaped like very large artillery shells, to support the weight of the vehicle. These cylinders have a spiral flange that digs into the snow; when
3240-412: The price elasticity of demand for that good. Ramsey poses the question that is to be solved at the beginning of the article: "A given revenue is to be raised by proportionate taxes on some or all uses of income, the taxes on different uses being possibly at different rates; how much should these rates be adjusted in order that the decrement of utility may be a minimum?" The problem was suggested to him by
3330-678: The Fascist regime in the Manchester Guardian . The contributions of Ramsey to these conversations were acknowledged by both Sraffa and Wittgenstein in their later work. In the introduction to Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein credits Ramsey's criticism of the Tractatus in the "interminable conversations" they had as having helped him realise "grave mistakes" within the work. Suffering chronic liver problems, Ramsey developed jaundice after an abdominal operation and died on 19 January 1930 at Guy's Hospital in London at
3420-527: The Malting House account. The Malting House School was based on the theories of the American philosopher and educationist John Dewey . It fostered the individual development of children; children were given great freedom and were supported rather than punished. The teachers were seen as observers of the children, who were seen as research workers. For a short time, The Maltings was a critical if not
3510-497: The Pykes took Ramsey into their family, taking him on holiday and asking him to be the godfather of their young son. Margaret found herself to be the object of his affection, Ramsey recording in his diary: One afternoon I went out alone with her on Lake Orta and became filled with desire and we came back and lay on two beds side by side she reading, I pretending to, but with an awful conflict in my mind. After about an hour I said (she
3600-717: The age of 26. There is a suspicion that the cause of his death might be an undiagnosed leptospirosis with which Ramsey, an avid swimmer, could have become infected while swimming in the Cam . He is buried in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge; his parents are buried in the same plot. Ramsey's notes and manuscripts were acquired by Nicholas Rescher for the Archives of Scientific Philosophy at
3690-424: The assistance of J. D. Bernal , concluded that Pyke's main proposals were feasible. In December 1942, Prime Minister Churchill issued a directive that research on the project should be pressed forward with the highest priority and he expressed the opinion that nature be allowed to do as much of the work as possible. The project to build a large aircraft carrier of pykrete was known as Project Habakkuk , and Pyke
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3780-598: The border, they consumed what remained of their food and discarded their equipment apart from some rope made from string, deciding to cross the Dutch frontier . As they rested, they were discovered by a soldier and tried to talk their way out of the encounter, only to discover the soldier was Dutch and they were already 50 yards (46 m) inside the Netherlands. From here, made their way to England . Pyke visited his news editor to confess that his mission had failed. However,
3870-497: The character of the department and Mountbatten allowed unusual talents and ideas. Conservative Member of Parliament Leo Amery wrote to Mountbatten recommending that Pyke's Norway scheme, originally rejected by Keyes, be re-examined and that Mountbatten should take Pyke onto his staff. Mountbatten valued Pyke's ideas, and for liberalising other staff, eventually adopted the plan. The scheme became Operation Plough . When presented to Prime Minister Winston Churchill , he noted in
3960-467: The cylinders turn (in opposite directions), the vehicle is propelled forwards. Pyke envisaged that a small force of highly mobile soldiers could occupy the attentions of many enemy soldiers who would be required to guard against possible points of attack. Initially, Pyke's idea was rejected. Then, in October 1941, Louis Mountbatten replaced Roger Keyes as Chief of Combined Operations . This changed
4050-482: The death penalty, and for government support of UNICEF . On the evening of Saturday 21 February 1948 in Steele's Road, Hampstead, Pyke shaved his beard and consumed a bottleful of sleeping pills . His landlady found his body the following Monday morning. The coroner gave a verdict of suicide at a moment of mental unbalance. Before consuming the pills, he had written private letters that made it clear that his death
4140-591: The degree of probability that an individual attaches to a particular outcome can be measured by finding what odds the individual would accept when betting on that outcome. Ramsey suggested a way of deriving a consistent theory of choice under uncertainty that could isolate beliefs from preferences while still maintaining subjective probabilities, although Ramsey later noted that "taking the whole field of chance events no generalizations about them are possible (consider e.g. infectious diseases, dactyls in hexameters, deaths from horse kicks, births of great men)". Despite
4230-595: The dynamic features of population growth at a steady rate and of Harrod-neutral technical progress again at a steady rate, giving birth to a model named the Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans model where the objective now is to maximise household's utility function . The Decision Analysis Society annually awards the Frank P. Ramsey Medal to recognise substantial contributions to decision theory and its application to important classes of real decision problems. Howard Raiffa
4320-412: The economics of public finance" In the same, Ramsey contributed to economic theory the elegant concept of Ramsey pricing . This is applicable in situations where a (regulated) monopolist wants to maximise consumer surplus whilst at the same time ensuring that its costs are adequately covered. This is achieved by setting the price such that the markup over marginal cost is inversely proportional to
4410-545: The economist Arthur Pigou and the paper was Ramsey's answer to the problem. Described by Partha Dasgupta , in a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry devoted to it, as "one of the dozen or so most influential papers of the 20th century" in the field of academic economics, "A Mathematical Theory of Saving" was originally published in The Economic Journal in 1928. It employed, as Paul Samuelson described it, "a strategically beautiful application of
4500-514: The editor told Pyke that the story of his escape, based on a long telegraph report Pyke had sent from Amsterdam, had become one of the biggest Fleet Street scoops of the war. Pyke was the first Englishman to get into Germany and out again, and he was encouraged to write a series of articles for the Chronicle . Pyke refused, citing lost interest in being a war correspondent. He divided his time between lecturing on his experiences and writing for
4590-546: The fact that Ramsey's work on probabilities was of great importance, no one paid any attention to it until the publication of Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern in 1944 (1947 2nd ed.) , although after Ramsey's death, an approach to probability similar to his was developed independently by the Italian mathematician Bruno de Finetti . This paper, first published in 1927 has been described by Joseph E. Stiglitz as "a landmark in
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#17327946242614680-489: The first German city to be targeted would be Frankfurt . Pyke travelled to Frankfurt where he met Peter Raleigh . Raleigh suggested that there were enough of Pyke's golfers in Germany to challenge the Frankfurt golf club to a match. Pyke concluded that this would be an excellent idea, and put this new plan into action. By 21 August, Pyke had ten interviewers working in Germany. On 25 August, following hints from contacts at
4770-498: The general case of the decision problem for first-order logic is unsolvable and that first-order logic is undecidable (see Church's theorem ). A great amount of later work in mathematics was fruitfully developed out of the ostensibly minor lemma used by Ramsey in his decidability proof: this lemma turned out to be an important early result in combinatorics , supporting the idea that within some sufficiently large systems, however disordered, there must be some order. So fruitful, in fact,
4860-484: The language "in almost hardly over a week", although other sources show he had taken one year of German in school. Ramsey was then able, at the age of 19, to make the first draft of the translation of the German text of Ludwig Wittgenstein 's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . Ramsey was impressed by Wittgenstein's work and after graduating as Senior Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos of 1923 he made
4950-649: The minutes of the meeting: Never in the history of human conflict will so few immobilize so many. Pyke's snow vehicle project was superseded by Canadian development of the Weasel tracked personnel carrier, produced first for the American - Canadian commando unit the First Special Service Force , which trained first for Norway but was actually deployed in Italy. The US built hundreds of these as
5040-550: The more he invested until he began to see himself and the people who ran the Great Ormond Street office as a gang of economic corsairs, youthful Bloomsbury intellectual buccaneers slashing through the City and coming away with all its money, and with it endowing a worthwhile work. Certainly, no individual in the strange company ever made any noticeable personal profit, and Pyke's high salary was always paid immediately into
5130-665: The outbreak of the First World War, Pyke quit his studies to become a war correspondent . He persuaded the editor of the Daily Chronicle to send him to Berlin. He used the passport obtained from an American sailor by travelling via Denmark. In Germany, he conversed with local Germans, and eavesdropped on other people's conversations, witnessing the mobilisation of Germans for war with the Russian Empire . In early October, 1914, after six days in Germany, Pyke
5220-409: The possibility of escape and repeatedly questioned fellow inmates. Most were pessimistic about escape, but an Englishman, Edward Falk, agreed despite the low success rate of other attempts. Pyke compiled statistical data on previous escapes, and together with Falk, made a decision to escape, following a regime of calisthenic exercise to prepare. On the afternoon of 9 July 1915, Pyke and Falk crept into
5310-459: The power and elegance of the technical methods employed, and the clear purity of illumination with which the writer's mind is felt by the reader to play about its subject. The article is terribly difficult reading for an economist, but it is not difficult to appreciate how scientific and aesthetic qualities are combined in it together." The Ramsey model is today acknowledged as the starting point for optimal accumulation theory although its importance
5400-525: The preceding research on pykrete was sufficiently advanced to allow Pyke's plan to be executed. The plan was not put into action, but for the allied invasion of Normandy a system of preconstructed concrete breakwaters and landing stages called Mulberry was employed. Pyke's plans hint that he had some knowledge of the Mulberry plans, perhaps through his contacts with Bernal , who was one of Mulberry's progenitors. In late 1943, Pyke submitted to Mountbatten
5490-585: The pressures would have to be high. He worked out ideas for supplying the passengers with oxygen and suggested that the problem of claustrophobia might be alleviated by travelling in pairs and by the use of barbiturate drugs. The whole experience (of riding in a pipe) however should be far less unpleasant, and take very much less time to become used to, than parachute jumping, or being bombed. Pyke proposed that this system could be used to move people from ship to shore, from island to island, through swamps and over mountains and anywhere where conventional transport
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#17327946242615580-530: The problem of finding out what the German people actually thought of the Nazi regime. His idea was to perform an opinion poll in secret by sending volunteers to Germany to interview ordinary people. He would train the volunteers personally. The plan was that the interviewers should pose as golfers on a tour of Germany and that interviews should be informal, with the questions being inserted into everyday conversation;
5670-474: The qualification for membership of which was a completed psychoanalysis. Ramsey married Lettice Baker in August 1925, the wedding taking place in a Register Office since Ramsey was, as his wife described him, a 'militant atheist '. The marriage produced two daughters. After Ramsey's death, Lettice Ramsey opened a photography studio in Cambridge with photographer Helen Muspratt . Despite his atheism , Ramsey
5760-492: The result of first class with distinction, and was named Senior Wrangler (top of his class). Easy-going, simple and modest, Ramsey had many interests besides his mathematical and scientific studies. Even as a teenager, Ramsey exhibited both a profound ability and, as attested by his brother, an extremely diverse range of interests: He was interested in almost everything. He was immensely widely read in English literature ; he
5850-406: The same term This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frank_Ramsey&oldid=1247706864 " Category : Human name disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
5940-432: The scheme and persuaded Pyke to let the matter drop. Pyke then wrote on grand strategy and worked on a number of ideas for practical inventions. Inspired by the sight of barrage balloons, he conceived the idea of using them to mount microphones allowing the location of aircraft to be ascertained by triangulation. Pyke was unaware that the development of radar provided a much better means of achieving this effect. With
6030-401: The subjectivity of probabilities does not matter as much, as for him there is an objective relationship between knowledge and probabilities, as knowledge is disembodied and not personal. Ramsey disagreed with this approach. In his article "Truth and Probability" (1926), he argued that there is a difference between the notions of probability in physics and in logic . For Ramsey, probability
6120-608: The suggestion of the construction of gigantic aircraft carriers from ice that was either frozen naturally or artificially. Whereas conventional aircraft carriers were restricted to relatively small, specialised aircraft, these could launch and land conventional fighters and bombers. As such, they could provide air cover for convoys in mid-Atlantic, staging posts for long flights over seas or as launch pads for amphibious assaults on France or Japan . A biography of Pyke by David Lampe indicates that he had decided to use ice reinforced with wood fibres, but other accounts make it clear that this
6210-431: The suggestions himself before allowing it to fall into the hands of "that damned fool Lushington". The second, longer, note asked that Mountbatten read the first thirty pages of the memorandum before deciding whether it was worthwhile to continue "It may be gold: it may only glitter. I can't tell. I have been hammering at it too long and am blinded". Mountbatten handed it to Brigadier Wildman-Lushington, and Lushington with
6300-490: The summer of 1924, he continued his analysis by joining Reik at Dobbiaco (in South Tyrol ), where a fellow analysand was Lewis Namier . Ramsey returned to England in October 1924; with John Maynard Keynes 's support, he became a fellow of King's College, Cambridge . He joined a Psychoanalysis Group in Cambridge with fellow members Arthur Tansley , Lionel Penrose , Harold Jeffreys , John Rickman and James Strachey ,
6390-512: The twentieth century, he set up an infants' school in his Cambridge home. His wife, Margaret, was a strong supporter of the school and its ideas. Pyke recruited a psychologist, Susan Sutherland Isaacs , to run the school, and although Pyke had many original ideas regarding education, he promised her that he would not interfere. Pyke continued with his city speculations which funded the Malting House School. The greater his gains,
6480-434: The type that were used to transport fuel from ship to shore, to move sealed containers that would contain any type of sufficiently small material objects. Pyke suggested that 4 or 6 inches (100 or 150 mm) pipes would handle smaller equipment and larger objects could be passed through two-foot pipes. Furthermore, there was no reason why the pipes should stop at the shore, they could be extended inland as required. Bernal gave
6570-511: The wave of antisemitism in Nazi Germany , citing humanitarian reasons. Pyke campaigned for Christian leaders to make simultaneous public statements condemning the Nazis, raising money to set up an organisation to combat anti-Semitism. He wrote a number of magazine articles on the irrationality of prejudice and started work on a book. In his published letters and articles, Pyke insisted that it
6660-449: The yard and exchanged words with other inmates. He pieced together poems from memory – If by Rudyard Kipling and Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll – and recited them loudly in the darkness. During this time, Pyke questioned his sanity. In January 1915, he was transferred to another prison where he was able to mix with other prisoners and buy newspapers, learning that thousands of foreigners had passed through this prison for
6750-636: Was "quite tolerant" towards his brother when the latter decided to become a priest in the Church of England . In 1926 he became a university lecturer in mathematics and later a Director of Studies in Mathematics at King's College. The Vienna Circle manifesto (1929) lists three of his publications in a bibliography of closely related authors. When I. A. Richards and C. K. Ogden , both Fellows of Magdalene , first met Ramsey, he expressed his interest in learning German. According to Richards, he mastered
6840-479: Was Ramsey's theorem that today there is an entire branch of mathematics, known as Ramsey theory , which is dedicated to studying similar results. In 1926, Ramsey proposed a simplification of the Theory of Types developed by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica . The resulting theory is known today as Theory of Simple Type (TST) or Simple Type Theory. Ramsey observed that
6930-601: Was a shortage of coal and oil. He recognised that such a use of human muscle power was in some ways distasteful, but could not see that the logic of arguments about calories and coal were unlikely to be sufficiently persuasive. Pyke was given a commission to look into the problems of the National Health Service and, characteristically, made his contribution as a part of a minority report . He remained eager to convey his unconventional ideas, and continued to both write and broadcast them. He campaigned against
7020-537: Was also influential in persuading Wittgenstein to return to philosophy and Cambridge. Like Wittgenstein, he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles , the secret intellectual society, from 1921. Ramsey was born on 22 February 1903 in Cambridge where his father Arthur Stanley Ramsey (1867–1954), also a mathematician, was President of Magdalene College . His mother was Mary Agnes Stanley (1875–1927). He
7110-561: Was arrested in his bed-sitting room, and was taken away leaving a letter written in English on his desk. Confined to a small cell in solitary confinement, he believed that he might not be executed after all; remarking that "the German government was not going to waste 4 d on my keep if it was going to be faced with burial expenses on the fifth day". During captivity, he reflected on hunger: Hunger – real hunger – not your going without afternoon tea, or no-eggs-at-breakfast sort of affair – can, when
7200-477: Was difficult. The idea was never used. After World War II, Pyke's inventions continued. One suggestion for the problems of energy-starved post-war Europe was to propel railway wagons by human muscle power – employing 20 to 30 men on bicycle-like mechanisms to pedal a cyclo-tractor. Pyke reasoned that the energy in a pound of sugar cost about the same as an equivalent energy in the form of coal and that while Europe had plenty of sugar and unemployed people, there
7290-475: Was enjoying classics though he was on the verge of plunging into being a mathematical specialist; he was very interested in politics, and well-informed; he had got a political concern and a sort of left-wing caring-for-the-underdog kind of outlook about politics. In 1923, Ramsey was befriended by Geoffrey and Margaret Pyke , then on the point of founding the Malting House School in Cambridge;
7380-596: Was intellectually interested in psychoanalysis. Ramsey's analyst was Theodor Reik , a disciple of Freud . As one of the justifications for undertaking the therapy, he asserted in a letter to his mother that unconscious impulses might affect even a mathematician's work. While in Vienna, he made a trip to Puchberg in order to visit Wittgenstein, was befriended by the Wittgenstein family and visited A.S. Neill 's experimental school four hours from Vienna at Sonntagsberg. In
7470-671: Was made the first Frank P. Ramsey Professor (of Managerial Economics) at Harvard University. Richard Zeckhauser was made the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University in 1971. Raiffa's chair was joint between the Harvard Business and Kennedy Schools. Zeckhauser's chair is in the Kennedy School. Partha Dasgupta was made the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics in 1994 and Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics in 2010 at
7560-657: Was necessary to collect data and this struck a chord with other thinkers who would – giving full credit for the germ of an idea to Pyke – go on to establish the Mass Observation project that set out to document the lives of ordinary Britons. During the Spanish Civil War , Pyke founded the Voluntary Industrial Aid for Spain (VIAS) organisation, encouraging individuals with little money to contribute their time and skills instead. This
7650-426: Was not recognised until many years after its first publication. The main contributions of the model were firstly the initial question Ramsey posed on how much savings should be and secondly the method of analysis, the intertemporal maximisation (optimisation) of collective or individual utility by applying techniques of dynamic optimisation. Tjalling C. Koopmans and David Cass modified the Ramsey model incorporating
7740-496: Was opposed by trade unionists who believed that unpaid work might set a dangerous precedent, but Pyke persisted. By October 1938, twenty-five vehicles had been sent to Spain including two mobile blood transfusion units, and by the end of the war, more than seventy vehicles had been contributed. Organised by Trade Unions , workers were, with the assistance of sympathetic employers who lent the use of machines and premises, able to produce useful items of equipment. Pyke also invented
7830-471: Was premeditated. An obituary in The Times praised him and lamented his passing, beginning with the words: The death of Geoffrey Pyke removes one of the most original if unrecognised figures of the present century. John Bernal, who knew Pyke well, wrote: He remained always the knight-errant, from time to time gathering round him a small band of followers but never a leader of big movements. Because of
7920-492: Was sent to Canada with a personal introduction from Winston Churchill to Mackenzie King . While he was away, an Admiralty committee headed by the Chief of Naval Construction sent a memorandum about Habakkuk to Mountbatten. Pyke returned from Canada. Pyke's original memorandum mentioned other applications for pykrete such as building landing ships for the prospective invasion of Japan and for quickly constructing fortifications at
8010-591: Was the eldest of two brothers and two sisters, and his brother Michael Ramsey , the only one of the four siblings who was to remain Christian, later became Archbishop of Canterbury . He entered Winchester College in 1915 and later returned to Cambridge to study mathematics at Trinity College . There he became a student of John Maynard Keynes and an active member in the Apostles. In 1923, he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics, passing his examinations with
8100-566: Was wearing her horn spectacles and looking superlatively beautiful in the Burne Jones style) 'Margaret will you fuck with me?' Margaret wanted time to consider his proposition and thus began an uncomfortable dance between them, which contributed to Ramsey's depressive moods in early 1924; as a result, he travelled to Vienna for psychoanalysis . Like many of his contemporaries, including his Viennese flatmate and fellow Apostle Lionel Penrose (also in analysis with Siegfried Bernfeld ), Ramsey
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