Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888 – 1975) was an Indian philosopher and politician who served as the second president of India from 1962 to 1967. He was also the first vice-president of India from 1952 to 1962.
Radhakrishnan was one of India's best and most influential twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy.
He was awarded several high awards during his life, including the Bharat Ratna (1954) and the Royal Order of Merit. He was nominated sixteen times for the Nobel prize in literature, and eleven times for the Nobel Peace prize.
Radhakrishnan believed that "teachers should be the best minds in the country". Since 1962, as per his suggestion, his birthday has been celebrated in India as Teachers' Day on 5th September every year.
Radhakrishnan was born in a Telugu-speaking Niyogi Brahmin family, in Tiruttani. His family hailed from Sarvepalli village in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh.
Radhakrishnan studied philosophy by chance rather than choice. Being a financially constrained student, when a cousin who graduated from the same college passed on his philosophy textbooks to Radhakrishnan, it automatically decided his academics course.
He wrote his bachelor's degree thesis on "The Ethics of the Vedanta and its Metaphysical Presuppositions," which was published when he was only twenty. Radhakrishnan published his Indian Philosophy in two volumes. It "was intended to be a reply to the charge that the Vedanta system had no room for ethics."
He served as the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University (1931 to 1936) & Banaras Hindu University (1939- 1948). His international academic authority preceded his political career. Radhakrishnan did not have a background in the Congress Party, nor was he active in the struggle against British rules.
He was one of the founders of Helpage India. Along with G. D. Birla and some other social workers in the pre-independence era, Radhakrishnan formed the Krishnarpan Charity Trust.