Sarvepalli Gopal was a well-known Indian historian. He is the author of Radhakrishnan: A Biography and Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography. Sarvepalli Gopal was born in Madras, India, on 23 April 1923 into a Telugu family. Gopal was educated at Mill Hill School in London and at the Madras Christian College. He was also a student at Balliol College, Oxford where he won the Curzon Prize and took a third class degree in history. He continued at Balliol earning his DPhil in 1951 on the vice-royalty of Lord Ripon. Subsequently, he was a Reader in Indian History at St Antony's College, Oxford. When the new Jawaharlal Nehru University was founded by then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, he was appointed as a Professor of History at the Centre for Historical Studies, which he helped in setting up. He was a Director in the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, and worked closely with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s. He was also Chairman of the National Book Trust, New Delhi in the 1970s. In 1976, he received the Sahitya Akademi Award.