Peirce, Charles Sanders 1839-1914
US philosopher, logician and mathematician

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Peirce, he graduated from Harvard (1859) and began his career as a scientist, working for the US Coast and Geodetic Survey (1861). He became a lecturer in logic at Johns Hopkins University (1879) but left (1894) to devote the rest of his life in seclusion to the private study of logic and philosophy. In his scientific work, he developed the theory of gravity measurement using pendulums, and conducted gravity experiments in Europe and North America. He also made an early determination of the metre in terms of a wavelength of light. In philosophy, he was a pioneer in the development of modern, formal logic and the logic of relations, but he is best known as the founder of pragmatism, which he later named 'pragmaticism' to distinguish it from the work of William James. His theory of meaning helped establish the new field of semiotics, which has become central in linguistics as well as philosophy. His enormous output of papers was collected and published posthumously in eight volumes (1931-58).