Edgar Morin (born Edgar Nahoum) is a French philosopher and sociologist who has been internationally recognized for his work on complexity and "complex thought," and for his scholarly contributions to such diverse fields as media studies, politics, sociology, visual anthropology, ecology, education, and systems biology. He holds degrees in history, economics, and law. Though less well known in the United States due to the limited availability of English translations of his over 60 books, Morin is renowned in the French-speaking world, Europe, and Latin America. At the beginning of the 20th century, Morin's family migrated from the Greek town of Salonica to Marseille and later to Paris, where Edgar was born. He first became tied to socialism in connection with the Popular Front and the Spanish Republican Government during the Spanish Civil War. When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Edgar fled to Toulouse, where he assisted refugees and committed himself to Marxist socialism. As a member of the French Resistance he adopted the pseudonym Morin, which he would use for the rest of his life. He joined the French Communist Party in 1941. In 1945, Morin married Violette Chapellaubeau and they lived in Landau, where he served as a Lieutenant in the French Occupation army in Germany. In 1946, he returned to Paris and gave up his military career to pursue his activities with the Communist party. Due to his critical posture, his relationship with the party gradually deteriorated until he was expelled in 1951 after he published an article in Le Nouvel Observateur. In the same year, he was admitted to the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS). Morin founded and directed the magazine Arguments (1954–1962). In 1959 his book Autocritique was published. In 1960, Morin travelled extensively in Latin America, visiting Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico.He returned to France where he published L'Esprit du Temps. That same year, French sociologist Georges Friedmann brought him and Roland Barthes together to create a Centre for the Study of Mass Communication that, after several name-changes, became the Edgar Morin Centre of the EHESS, Paris. Beginning in 1965, Morin became involved in a large multidisciplinary project, financed by the Délégation Générale à la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique in Plozévet. In 1968, Morin replaced Henri Lefebvre at the University of Nanterre. He became involved in the student revolts that began to emerge in France. In May 1968, he wrote a series of articles for Le Monde that tried to understand what he called "The Student Commune." He followed the student revolt closely and wrote a second series of articles in Le Monde called "The Revolution without a Face," as well as co-authoring Mai 68: La brèche with Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort. In 1969, Morin spent a year at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. In 1983, he published De la nature de l’URSS, which deepened his analysis of Soviet communism and anticipated the Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev. Morin was married to Johanne Harrelle, with whom he lived for 15 years. In 2002, Morin participated in the creation of the International Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium. In addition to being the UNESCO Chair of Complex Thought, Morin is known as a founder of transdisciplinarity and holds honorary doctorates in a variety of social science fields from 21 universities (Messina, Geneva, Milan, Bergamo, Thessaloniki, La Paz, Odense, Perugia, Cosenza, Palermo, Nuevo León, Université de Laval à Québec, Brussels, Barcelona, Guadalajara, Valencia, Vera Cruz, Santiago, the Catholic University of Porto Alegre, the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, and Candido Mendes University Rio de Janeiro. The University of Messina in Sicily, Ricardo Palma University in Lima, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the French National Research Center in

Tariq Ramadan is the son of Said Ramadan and Wafa Al-Bana, who was the eldest daughter of Hassan al Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Gamal al-Banna, the liberal Muslim reformer is his great-uncle. His father was a prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and was exiled by Gamal Abdul Nasser[3] from Egypt to Switzerland, where Tariq was born. Tariq Ramadan studied Philosophy and French literature at the Masters level and holds a PhD in Arabic and Islamic studies from the University of Geneva. He also wrote a PhD dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche, entitled Nietzsche as a Historian of Philosophy.[4] Ramadan then studied Islamic jurisprudence at Al-Azhar university in Cairo, Egypt.[5] He taught at the College de Saussure, a high school in Geneva, Switzerland, and held a lectureship in Religion and Philosophy at the University of Fribourg from 1996 to 2003. In October 2005 he began teaching at St Antony's College at the University of Oxford on a Visiting Fellowship. In 2005 he was a senior research fellow at the Lokahi Foundation.[6][7] In 2007 he successfully applied for the professorship in Islamic studies at the University of Leiden, but then declined to take up the position, citing professional reasons.[8][9] He was also a guest professor of Identity and Citizenship at Erasmus University Rotterdam,[10][11][12] till August 2009 when the City of Rotterdam and Erasmus University dismissed him from his positions as "integration adviser" and professor, stating that the program he chairs on Iran's Press TV, Islam & Life, was "irreconcilable" with his duties in Rotterdam. Ramadan described this move as Islamophobic and politically charged. Beginning September 2009, Ramadan, was appointed to the His Highness Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Chair in Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University. Ramadan established the Mouvement des Musulmans Suisses (Movement of Swiss Muslims),which engages in various interfaith seminars. He is an advisor to the EU on religious issues and was sought for advice by the EU on a commission on “Islam and Secularism”.In September 2005 he was invited to join a task force by the government of the United Kingdom.[3] He is also the President of the Euro-Muslim Network,a Brussels-based think-tank. He is widely interviewed and has produced about 100 tapes which sell tens of thousands of copies each year As of 2009, Tariq Ramadan was persona non grata in Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia[19] Libya or Syria because of his "criticism of these undemocratic regimes that deny the most basic human rights". Ramadan is married to a French convert to Islam and they have four children.