Leszek Kolakowski

Leszek Kolakowski grew up during the German occupation of Poland in the Second World War. Unable to attend school, he took his exams as a student in the underground school system, eventually studying philosophy and becoming professor at Warsaw University in 1959. A early supporter of Communism, a trip to Moscow in 1950 led him to become aware of 'the enormity of material and spiritual desolation caused by the Stalinist system.' Ultimately his philosophical works were banned, he was dismissed from the Communist party and eventually sent into exile, teaching in the United States and Britain. He became a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford in 1970 and has remained there ever since. 

One of the most influential philosophers of his time, he has received numerous awards and in 2004 was awarded the first ever one million dollar Kluge Prize by the American Library of Congress - the Nobel Prize for Human Sciences. His latest book is Why is There Something Rather than Nothing? (Penguin, 2007).