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Gerrit Mannoury Gerrit Mannoury (17 May 1867 – 30 January 1956) was a Dutch philosopher and mathematician, professor at the University of Amsterdam and communist, known as the central figure in the signific circle, a Dutch counterpart of the Vienna circle.[1] BiographyGerrit Mannoury was born on 17 May 1867 in Wormerveer, and died on 30 January 1956 in Amsterdam. On 8 August 1907 he married Elizabeth Maria Berkelbach van der Sprenkel,[2] with whom he had three daughters and a son, Jan Mannoury. His father Gerrit Mannoury, a sea-captain, had died in China when he was three years old.[3] He attended the Hogere Burgerschool (HBS) in Amsterdam, where he graduated in 1885. The same year he received a Teacher's Degree in Accounting and in Mechanics. In 1902 he also received a Teacher's Degree in Mathematics. Mannoury was a self-educated mathematician. Because he was a teacher he couldn't attend lessons at the University of Amsterdam. He did receive private lessons from Diederik Korteweg. He was awarded a PhD in Mathematics late in life, in 1946, with L.E.J. Brouwer as his promotores.[4] Mannoury was a committed socialist throughout his life. In 1901 he helped to found the scientific bureau of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP), of which he was secretary until 1906. In 1909 Mannoury left the SDAP with Orthodox Marxist opposition, and took a seat on the party board of the newly founded Social Democratic Party (SDP). After the Russian October Revolution, the SDP renamed itself in 1918 to the Communist Party of Holland (CPH) (later the Communist Party of the Netherlands). Mannoury started working in primary education in Amsterdam, Bloemendaal and Helmond. In 1910 he started teaching at the Hoogere Burger School (HBS) at Vlissingen. In 1902 he had been appointed privaatdocent at the University of Amsterdam and in 1917 he was made professor there. In 1932 Mannoury was disbarred from the Communist Party for supporting the exiled Leon Trotsky. Following this event, Mannoury's political activity was mostly centered for the abolition of the death penalty. He retired in 1937. He lectured on the philosophy of mathematics, and on mechanics, analytics and descriptive and projective geometry.[5] Mannoury was, with Diederik Korteweg, one of the most important teachers of Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer at Amsterdam University, Mannoury especially philosophically. The first appearance of the names "formalism" and "intuitionism" in Brouwer's writings, were in a review of Gerrit Mannoury's book Methodologisches und Philosophisches zur Elementar-Mathematik (Methodological and philosophical remarks on elementary mathematics) from 1909.[6] Two other Dutch scientists he inspired were philosopher and logician Evert W. Beth and psychologist Adriaan de Groot. He died in Amsterdam. WorkMannoury's main inspirations were G. W. F. Hegel, G.J.P.J. Bolland and F. H. Bradley. He was also inspired by the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Baruch Spinoza, the French mathematician philosopher of science Henri Poincaré and the English positivism of Bertrand Russell. Mannoury combined a logical-mathematical way of thinking with a deep insight into the human soul.[3] PublicationsMannoury was a prolific and polymathic writer who published books, articles, reviews, and pamphlets.[7]
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