Ray Monk (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 M.A. in Philosophy from the University of York in 1979. Later he obtained an MLitt from the University of Oxford.

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

Works

  • Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude 1872–1921. London: Vintage Books, 1996.
  • Russell. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
  • Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 1921–1970. London: Vintage Books, 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)
  • Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer. London: Jonathan Cape, 2012; Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center. New York: Doubleday, 2013.

References

  • 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