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Ray Monk FRSL (born 15 February 1957) is a British biographer who is renowned for his biographies of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. He is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Southampton, where he taught in various capacities from 1992 to 2018.

Biography

Monk graduated with an MA in Philosophy from the University of York in 1979. Later he obtained an MLitt from the University of Oxford.

He won the 1990 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the 1991 Duff Cooper Prize for his acclaimed biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. His two-volume biography of Bertrand Russell appeared in 1996 and 2001. His biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer was published in 2012.

Since 2012 he has occasionally written for the New Statesman, contributing articles on philosophers and on veganism.

In 2015 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Works

• Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. New York, NY: Penguin Books. 1991. ISBN 978-0-14-015995-0.
• Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude 1872–1921. London: Vintage, 1996.
• Russell. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
• Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 1921–1970. London: Vintage, 2001.
• How to Read Wittgenstein. London: Granta, 2005.
• "Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Sketch of His Life" (chapter in A Companion to Wittgenstein, edited by Hans-Johann Glock and John Hyman. Wiley-Blackwell, 2017)
• Monk, Ray (2012). Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center. New York; Toronto: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-50407-2.
  • Monk, Ray (2012). Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center. London: Jonathan Cape/Random House. ISBN 978-0224-062626.
  • Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer. London: Jonathan Cape, 2012; Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center. New York: Doubleday, 2013.
  • Monk, Ray (2014). Robert Oppenheimer: a life inside the center (First Anchor books ed.). New York: Anchor Books. ISBN 978-0385722049.

References

1. "Professor Ray Monk | Philosophy | University of Southampton". www.southampton.ac.uk.
2. ^ "An Interview with Ray Monk". Cogito. 6 (2): 57–61. 1 July 1992. doi:10.5840/cogito19926228 – via www.pdcnet.org.
3. "x.com".
4. "Writers". www.newstatesman.com. Retrieved 1 May 2018.
5. "Ray Monk on veganism in the New Statesman". University of Southampton.
6. "Ray Monk". Royal Society of Literature. September 2023.
7. "Ray Monk's Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius". 2 August 2021.
8. Maslin, Janet (27 May 2013). "Rough-Edged Atomic Pioneer". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 July 2023.

External links

• Home page
• Philosophy Bites podcast interview with Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography
• WGBY audio recording of lecture "Philosophy Circa 1905"
• Leading, contemporary biographers Hermione Lee & Ray Monk and director Stephen Frears debate whether all biographies are fiction
• Appearances on C-SPAN

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