Gottlob Frege
(1848-1925)
Frege was the father of modern mathematical logic. In 1879 he published
Concept-Notation, a work that
included a formal language which was able to express generality through the
quantifier-variable notation.
This work also set forth a version of second order quantificational logic
whcih he used to develop a logical
definition for the ancestral of a relation. He was incredibly influential
on the later works of Wittgenstein,
Russell, George Boole, and Ernst Schroeder.
In "On Sense and Meaning" Frege grapples with the problems of the difference
between meaning and
reference, and between proper name and its sense. He opened up new areas in
the study of sense and
meaning that were widely written on for the next 5 decades.