Frege, Gottlob [key], 1848–1925, German philosopher and mathematician. He was professor of mathematics (1879–1918) at the Univ. of Jena. Frege was one of the founders of modern symbolic logic, and his work profoundly influenced Bertrand Russell. He claimed that all mathematics could be derived from purely logical principles and definitions. He considered verbal concepts to be expressible as symbolic functions with one or more variables. His books include Begriffsschrift (1879); Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884; tr. The Foundations of Arithmetic, 1950); Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (2 vol., 1893–1903).
See P. T. Geach and M. Black, ed., Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege (1952); M. Resnik, Frege and the Philosophy of Mathematics (1980); M. Dummett, The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy (repr. 1981).
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