Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan is one of the most remarkable philosophers and religious thinkers of modern India. His philosophical and religious ambitions were far reaching. He tried to establish a connection between Indian thought (based on Vedanta and Buddhism) and Western thought, without sacrificing any of the main Hindu theories. As with many of his contemporaries, he participated in the movement for India's independence and held several distinguished positions in the new government of independent India, including the post of president.

Radhakrishnan was born on September 5, 1888, at Tituttani, near Madras in South India. His early years were spent there and in Tirupati, both renowned pilgrimage centers. As was customary, he married young. He and his wife Sivakanuamma had five daughters and one son. He graduated with a master's degree in arts from Madras Christian College in 1908 and wrote a thesis called The Ethics of the Vedanta and Its Metaphysical Presuppositions, which was a reply to the charge that the Vedanta system had no room for ethics. The thesis was published as a book when he was just twenty years old.

It was just the beginning of a philosophical career in which he moved easily between Eastern and Western philosophy. In 1909, when he was twenty-one, he took a position in the department of philosophy at the Madras Presidency College. He followed that distinction with an even greater one, first being appointed professor of philosophy in the University of Mysore, and three years later being appointed to the most important philosophy chair in India — King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science in the University of Calcutta.

The honors kept getting greater for the philosopher and political figure. He represented the University of Calcutta at the Congress of Universities of the British Empire in June 1926 and the International Congress of Philosophy at Harvard University. In 1929, he took a post at Manchester College, Oxford, and from 1936 to 1939 served as Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at Oxford. In 1939, he was elected fellow of the British Academy. From 1939 to 1948, he was the vice chancellor of Banaras Hindu University.

An academic career then blossomed into politics. Among myriad posts, he was the leader of the Indian delegation to UNESCO from 1946 to 1952, and served as ambassador to the Soviet Union 1949–1952. He was also vice president of India from 1952 to 1962. From May 1962 to May 1967, he was the president of India. He passed away on April 17, 1975, at the age of eighty-six.

In the same open spirit that allowed him to bridge Eastern and Western thought, Radhakrishnan, like Gandhi, was not restricted by social conventions adverse to freedom and justice. He criticized India's caste system and customs that degraded women, and he fought to establish a pluralistic and democratic society that would fulfill the highest ideals of Indian tradition.