The life stories of a remarkably large number of logicians contains a section where they end up in a mental hospital or are otherwise described as having sufficiently serious mental problems to require institutionalization. In other cases, while the term "mental illness" isn't quite right, the characters in question become isolated or have a dark turn to their story, typically one that involves the mind more than the body. ## Georg Cantor Mania and depression. In and out of institutions. Died in a sanatorium. ## Gottlob Frege Depression following the paradox letter from Russell. Legend has it that after receiving the infamous letter from Bertrand Russell, Frege had a mental breakdown and had to be hospitalized. ## Moses Schönfinkel Early lambda. Unspecified mental illness. Said to have disappeared after inventing combinatory logic. ## Kurt Gödel Paranoia, possibly schizophrenia. Life long hypochondriac. Starved himself to death when his wife had a stroke and was temporarily hospitalized because he didn't trust food prepared by anyone but her. ## Alan Turing Seen as mentally ill for being gay. Doesn't exactly count, but counted enough at the time to lead to his (mostly coerced but also slightly voluntary) suicide. ## Emil Post Manic depression. Ordered by his doctor to spend at most three hours a day on research in order to avoid manic attacks. Died in April 1954 of a heart attack following electroshock treatment for depression. ## Walter Pitts Extremely ccentric, avoided any situation that would require him to sign his name or to make his name publicly available. Pitts died in 1969 of bleeding esophageal varices, a condition usually associated with cirrhosis and alcoholism. ## L. E. J. Brouwer > In later years Brouwer became relatively isolated; the development of intuitionism at its source was taken up by his student Arend Heyting. Dutch mathematician and historian of mathematics Bartel Leendert van der Waerden attended lectures given by Brouwer in later years, and commented: "Even though his most important research contributions were in topology, Brouwer never gave courses in topology, but always on — and only on — the foundations of his intuitionism. It seemed that he was no longer convinced of his results in topology because they were not correct from the point of view of intuitionism, and he judged everything he had done before, his greatest output, false according to his philosophy." About his last years, Davis (2002) remarks: > > "...he felt more and more isolated, and spent his last years under the spell of 'totally unfounded financial worries and a paranoid fear of bankruptcy, persecution and illness.' He was killed in 1966 at the age of 85, struck by a vehicle while crossing the street in front of his house." (Davis, p. 100 quoting van Stigt. p. 110.) > > -The Dynamic Read-Writable Free Encyclopedic Repository of the Modern State of Human Knowledge