Ludwig Wittgenstein spent over twenty years living and teaching in Cambridge. Even for the time, Wittgenstein's teaching style was strange. He taught very small groups of students who were seated in check-chairs around him. Normal teaching styles of the time were very formal with students sitting in large lecture halls and listening to old professors. Wittgenstein's way of teaching must have been a very strange experience for the students. He would talk about what was going on in his own mind connected to philosophical problems he was trying to answer. This personal discussion would go on for hours. He once said that he considered his role to be like a tour guide showing American tourists around London. This entailed making suresure that the tourist avoided getting lost and wasting time on questions of philosophy that led down to dead ends.

Wittgenstein did not have a very happy personal life during his professorship at Cambridge. Most of this unhappiness was caused by his homosexuality, which was still illegal and punishable by imprisonment. In the educational society of Cambridge it was allowed to some level if kept out of the general knowledge of the general society of Cambridge. Wittgenstein did not obey these unwritten rules. He had relationships with students, which were very public in nature. Even today, he would have gotten himself into some deep professional troubles with his behavior..