Thomas Hobbes was born in Malmesbury, the son of a wayward country vicar. He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and was supported during his long life by the wealthy Cavendish family, the Earls of Devonshire. Traveling widely, he met many of the leading intellectuals of the day, including Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, and Rene Descartes. As a philosopher and political theorist, Hobbes established---along with, but independently of, Descartes---early modern modes of thought in reaction to the scholasticism that characterized the seventeenth century. Because of his ideas, he was constantly in dispute with scientists and theologians, and many of his works were banned. His writings on psychology raised the possibility (later realized) that psychology could become a natural science, but his theory of politics is his most enduring achievement. In brief, his theory states that the problem of establishing order in society requires a sovereign to whom people owe loyalty and who in turn has duties toward his or her subjects. His prose masterpiece Leviathan (1651) is regarded as a major contribution to the theory of the state.
Richard Tuck is the author of Natural Rights Theories (Cambridge, 1979), Hobbes (1989), Philosophy and Government, 1572 1651 (Cambridge, 1993), The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (1999) and Free Riding (2008). He is the editor of standard editions of Hobbes and Grotius, and the author of many scholarly articles on the history of political thought and political philosophy. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was a fellow for twenty-six years before moving to Harvard. He has been invited to give many series of lectures, including the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford, the Benedict Lectures at Boston University, and the Seeley Lectures at Cambridge. At Harvard he has served as the Chair of the Social Studies Program since 2006.