Jean-Paul Sartre

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre became interested in philosophy as a teenager growing up in Paris in the 1920s, earning a degree in philosophy at the esteemed École Normale Supérieure. Sartre was drafted into the French Army in WWII and spent nine months as a prisoner of war. After his release, Sartre focused mostly on political activism and writing, publishing the essay Being and Nothingness and the existential plays The Flies and No Exit. Sartre would go on to write many dozens more works of fiction and nonfiction and become one of the leading figures of 20th-century philosophy. In 1964, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but refused it.