Karl Marx (1818–1883) was born in Trier, Prussia on May 5 and died in London on March 14. He was educated in Trier and at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, thus coming under the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (who he later radically criticized) before receiving his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1841. Throughout most of his adult life, he was assisted both financially and intellectually by Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), with whom he coauthored such works as The German Ideology (1845–1846) and "The Communist Manifesto" (1848).

Marx wrote mainly on capitalism as an economic system, and is most closely identified with the multivolume Capital (Vol 1 [1867]; Vol. 2 [1885]; Vol.3 [1894], Vols. 2 and 3 published by Engels after Marx's death). This massive 2,500 page work explores the capitalist system in terms of the logic of its functioning, its historical progression, and its fate. Marx's writings on science are scattered and fragmentary, and his...