German philosopher and musicologist Theodor Adorno was BOTD in 1903. Born in Frankfurt in the German Empire, he studied philosophy at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, where he was influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin. After teaching at the university for two years, he immigrated to England in 1934 to escape the Nazis’ persecution of German Jews. He taught at the University of Oxford for three years, before moving to the United States, where he taught at Princeton University in New York and the University of California Berkeley. While in California, he befriended the novelist Thomas Mann, working together on Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus. After the war, he returned to Frankfurt, establishing the Institute for Social Research. He and his colleague Max Horkheimer became leading proponents of what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory. In their 1947 book Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of Enlightenment), they argued that the Enlightenment and modern scientific thought had dominated humanity, leading to Fascism and the ultimate negation of human freedom, and proposed art as the only means of preserving individual autonomy and happiness. In the 1950s, he became a public figure, frequently appearing in interviews and discussions in radio and newspapers. An extraordinarily prolific writer, his work included detailed analyses of Franz Schubert, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, Alban Berg Samuel Beckett, discussions of the future of art after the Holocaust, including his famous statement “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric“) and critiques of mid-century capitalism and American involvement in the Vietnam War. In his much-quoted 1963 essay Sexual Taboos and Law Today, he described sexuality as essentially anarchic and transgressive, occupying an uneasy existence within capitalism, which attempts to both commodify and punish sexual expression. An often controversial figure, he clocked up an astonishing number of enemies, notably philosophers Hannah Arendt (who described him as “one of the most repulsive human beings I know”) and Karl Jaspers (“a fraud”) and actress Lotte Lenya (“a paleface flaming asshole”). In later life, he came increasingly in conflict with contemporary culture, criticising jazz and pop music and the violent tactics of the 1968 student protest movement. His later publications include Philosophie der neuen Musik (Philosophy of Modern Music), Negative Dialektik (Negative Dialectics) and the posthumously released Ästhetische Theorie (Aesthetic Theory). Adorno was in a long-term relationship with Gretel Karplus, and had a lifelong, erotically-charged friendship with his colleague Siegfried Kracauer, leading to biographical speculation about his possible bisexuality. He died in 1969, aged 65. Now considered a giant of 20th century cultural theory, his work was highly influential on the work of writers Edward Saïd, Elfriede Jelinek and Judith Butler and filmmaker Michael Haneke. His interest in totalitarianism has often led to comparisons with French philosopher Michel Foucault, though they appear to have never crossed paths.