Jeremy Bentham

Born in London on 15 February 1748, he was a child prodigy who studied at Oxford and trained for the law, but soon became frustrated with English legal practice. Instead of building a conventional career at the bar, he devoted himself to writing about how laws and public institutions could be made clearer, fairer, and more useful.

He is best known as the earliest major expounder of utilitarianism: the view that actions and policies should be judged by how much happiness or benefit they produce. Across his long career, he wrote on legal codification, prisons, economics, parliamentary reform, religious liberty, and other social questions. His plans for the "Panopticon" prison became especially famous, even though they were never fully realized as he intended.

Bentham died in London on 6 June 1832. He remains closely associated with University College London, where his preserved "auto-icon" is still one of the institution's most unusual landmarks. More importantly, his work helped lay foundations for later thinkers in moral philosophy, jurisprudence, and political reform.