[2] He was taught by John Swinnerton Phillimore, Sir Henry Jones and David Picken, the latter of whom gave some instruction on the philosophy of mathematics, which was then a topic of much interest from philosophers including Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead.
After completing his degrees, Russell's prize money allowed him to keep studying and began working towards the honours school in English literature under Macneile Dixon, but in 1908 Glasgow's professor of logic, Robert Latta, encouraged him to study in the University of Cambridge as preparation for an academic career at Glasgow.
He then went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and completed an advanced course on logic delivered by W. E. Johnson; he attended these with John Laird and C. D. Broad, and struck up a friendship with the geographer Griffith Taylor.
After the First World War, he began work on producing an edition of Leibniz's papers for the Prussian Academy of Sciences, but the political instability in Germany prevented its realisation.
[7] During this period, teaching and administrative duties occupied him more than his studies, though he authored Introduction to Philosophy in 1929, which was based on broadcasts he had given on the topic.