Cornforth was born in
Willesden, London, in 1909, and educated at
University College School, where he was friends with
Stephen Spender. In 1925 he went up to
University College London, graduating in 1929, and then went on as an affiliated student to read Part II of the Moral Sciences
Tripos at
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was the only student on a specialised course in logic, taught by
Moore,
Braithwaite, and
Wittgenstein. In 1931, after graduating, Cornforth was awarded a three-year research scholarship at Trinity. and in the autumn married a fellow Cambridge student, Kitty Klugmann, sister of
James. From 1933 Cornforth worked full-time for the Communist Party in East Anglia. Rejected for military service on medical grounds, during the
Second World War Cornforth worked as a farm labourer. He published his first work,
Science Versus Idealism, in 1946. In 1950 he was appointed as managing director of
Lawrence & Wishart, a post he held until 1975, during which period he was responsible for the publishing of
Marx's and
Engels's
Collected Works. Cornforth died aged 71 in
Islington, London, in 1980, leaving a widow, Kathleen Elliott, his second wife. ==Philosophy==