author
Louis Couturat
1868–1914
A brilliant French thinker who moved easily between philosophy, mathematics, logic, and language, he is especially remembered for his work on Leibniz and for helping shape the international auxiliary language Ido.
1 Audiobook
International Language and Science Considerations on the Introduction of an International Language into Science
by Leopold Pfaundler von Hadermur, Louis Couturat, Otto Jespersen, Richard Lorenz, Wilhelm Ostwald
About the author
Born on January 17, 1868, Louis Couturat was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. He studied philosophy and mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure and later taught at the University of Toulouse before holding a post at the Collège de France.
Couturat became an important early advocate of symbolic logic and is often linked with the logicist movement. He also played a major role in modern Leibniz scholarship by publishing previously unpublished Leibniz texts and writing influential studies of Leibniz's logic and philosophy.
Beyond academic philosophy, he devoted much of his energy to the idea of an international auxiliary language. He was a leading figure in the movement that produced Ido, a reform of Esperanto, and that practical, reforming spirit gives his work an unusual range. He died on August 3, 1914, at the age of 46.