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Simone Weil (French pronunciation: [simɔn vɛj]; 3 February 1909 in Paris, France – 24 August 1943...

Simone Weil (French pronunciation: [simɔn vɛj]; 3 February 1909 in Paris, France – 24 August 1943 in Ashford, Kent, England), was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist. Weil was born in Paris to Alsatian agnostic Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. She grew up in comfortable circumstances, as her father was a doctor. Her only sibling was André Weil, who would go on to become one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. She suffered throughout her life from severe headaches, sinusitis, and poor physical coordination, and spared no scrutiny to these in her philosophical writings. Her brilliance, ascetic lifestyle, introversion, and eccentricity limited her ability to mix with others, but not to teach and participate in political movements of her time. She wrote extensively with both insight and breadth about political movements of which she was a part and later about spiritual mysticism. Weil biographer Gabriella Fiori writes that Weil was "a moral genius in the orbit of ethics, a genius of immense revolutionary range." Weil was a precocious student, proficient in ancient Greek by the age of 12. She later learned