I would like if you could refer me to that reading as well. I really know nothing about, uh, any of that, so I cannot judge. But your description strikes me as rather weird: "dedicating his life" seems a bit dramatic, since Principia is a pretty early work of his. He was active for 50-60 more years since he must have been "driven insane", as you say. Most of his famous works were written after that. Also, all of famous results of Gödel were after Russell finished with Principia. Not that he ever finished, but given the fact Second Edition was 15 years after the First one, and mostly contained relatively minor fixes… it seems only logical to conclude that he wasn't pursuing the topic after the first publication, basically, ever since realizing how big of a task would it be to try and formalize all of math like that.