Jiddu Krishnamurti was one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. He was born in Madanapalle, Andhra Pradesh, in 1895 and raised to be a spiritual teacher under Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater, leaders of the Theosophical Society in Madras. He was made the head of a worldwide organization called the Order of the Star of the East but he eventually disavowed this role and became a peripatetic teacher giving talks all over the world. His speeches confronted the problems of contemporary life and called for a radical and spiritual change in mankind. He died at the age of ninety in Ojai, California, in 1986.