Thinkers Timeline

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German economist, philosopher, historian, and political thinker whose ideas have shaped the modern world more than almost any other thinker of his century. He was born in Trier, in what was then the Prussian Rhineland. His family was Jewish — both his grandfathers had been rabbis — but his father had converted to Lutheran Christianity to be allowed to practise law. Marx grew up in a comfortable middle-class home with a good education. He studied law at the University of Bonn and then philosophy at Berlin, where he was deeply influenced by the philosophy of Hegel. He completed his doctorate in 1841. He could not become a university professor because of his radical views, so he turned to journalism. As editor of a Rhineland newspaper, he began writing on political and economic questions. The Prussian authorities soon shut the paper down. In 1843 he married his childhood sweetheart Jenny von Westphalen and moved to Paris, where he met Friedrich Engels in 1844. The two men would remain close friends and intellectual partners for the rest of Marx's life. Engels, whose family owned textile factories, gave Marx direct knowledge of industrial conditions and later supported him financially for many years. In 1848 Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Revolutions broke out across Europe that same year. Marx was expelled from several countries before settling in London in 1849. He lived there for the rest of his life, working in the British Museum reading room and writing his great book Capital — the first volume of which was published in 1867. He worked in great poverty for much of this period, losing several children to the diseases of poverty and depending heavily on Engels's financial help. He helped found the International Working Men's Association in 1864, which brought together socialists and labour activists from many countries. He died in London in 1883 at the age of sixty-four. Engels edited and published the remaining volumes of Capital after his death. Marx's influence has been enormous and contested. Movements calling themselves Marxist transformed whole societies in the twentieth century, with results both remarkable and, in some cases, catastrophic. His work itself remains a reference point for anyone trying to understand capitalism, class, and modern history.

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) was a British economist whose ideas changed the way governments manage their economies. He grew up in Cambridge, England, studied mathematics and philosophy, and became one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. He worked as a civil servant, an academic, a journalist, and an adviser to the British government during two world wars. His most important book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, argued that governments should actively manage their economies rather than leaving everything to the market. His ideas shaped the economic policies of most democratic countries for decades after the Second World War and remain central to economic debate today.

Joan Robinson was a British economist. She was one of the most important economists of the 20th century. Many people think she should have won the Nobel Prize in Economics. She never did, almost certainly because she was a woman and because her views were politically uncomfortable. She was born in 1903 in Camberley, Surrey, in southern England. Her birth name was Joan Maurice. She came from an upper-middle-class family. Her father was a soldier and her mother was the daughter of a famous classics professor. Joan studied economics at Cambridge from 1922. The university had only recently begun allowing women to take degree examinations. She married another young economist, Austin Robinson, in 1926. They had two daughters. She became part of the famous group of Cambridge economists around John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was working out his revolutionary new theory of how economies actually work. Joan was one of his closest collaborators. She helped develop his ideas. She also did major original work of her own. Her 1933 book The Economics of Imperfect Competition introduced ideas that became standard in economics. She taught at Cambridge for over 50 years. She was finally promoted to a full professorship in 1965, much later than she should have been. She was sharp, sometimes difficult, and often controversial. She visited China multiple times during the Cultural Revolution and wrote about it more positively than later events would justify. She also visited North Korea and admired aspects of its economy. Some of these political judgements have aged badly. She remained intellectually active until shortly before her death in 1983.

Amartya Sen (born 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher. He was born in West Bengal, India, and grew up during a period of great upheaval: as a child he witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943, in which around three million people died of hunger. This experience shaped his life's work. He studied economics in India and then at Cambridge University in England, where he later became a professor. He has also taught at Harvard University in the United States, where he has spent much of his career. In 1998 he received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on welfare economics, poverty, and inequality. He is best known outside economics for two connected contributions: the capabilities approach, a new way of measuring human development and wellbeing, and his analysis of famine, which showed that famines are not caused by a shortage of food but by political failures that leave some people unable to afford the food that exists. He has also written important books on democracy, justice, identity, and the relationship between freedom and development.

Angus Deaton is an economist. He was born in 1945 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was a coal miner who valued education highly. Deaton won scholarships to good schools and then studied at the University of Cambridge in England. After a short job at the Bank of England, Deaton became a university teacher. He taught in Britain, at Cambridge and Bristol. In 1983 he moved to Princeton University in the United States, where he spent most of his career. He now holds both British and American citizenship. Deaton's work is about real, practical questions. How much do people spend, and on what? How is poverty measured? Why do some people live long, healthy lives while others do not? He is famous for being careful with data and for asking whether the numbers we use can really be trusted. In 2015 Deaton won the Nobel Prize in Economics. The prize honoured his work on consumption, poverty, and welfare. Deaton has also written books for general readers, such as 'The Great Escape' and 'Economics in America'. With his wife, the economist Anne Case, he studied a worrying rise in early deaths among some Americans. In recent years Deaton has openly questioned parts of mainstream economics that he once supported.