Robert Pirsig

Robert M. Pirsig
Pirsig in July 2005
Born	Robert Maynard Pirsig (1928-09-06)September 6, 1928 Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Died	April 24, 2017(2017-04-24) (aged 88) South Berwick, Maine, U.S.
Occupation	Writer, philosopher
Alma mater	University of Minnesota Banaras Hindu University University of Chicago
Genre	Philosophical fiction
Notable works	Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991)
Spouse	Nancy Ann James (m. 1954; div. 1978) Wendy Kimball (m. 1978; his death 2017)
Children	3
Relatives	Maynard Pirsig (father)

Robert Maynard Pirsig (September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He was the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991).

Pirsig was born on September 6, 1928 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Harriet Marie Sjobeck and Maynard Pirsig. He was of German and Swedish descent. His father was a University of Minnesota Law School (UMLS) graduate, and started teaching at the school in 1934. The elder Pirsig served as the law school dean from 1948 to 1955, and retired from teaching at UMLS in 1970. He resumed his career as a professor at the William Mitchell College of Law, where he remained until his final retirement in 1993.

Because he was a precocious child with an IQ of 170 at age nine, Pirsig skipped several grades and was enrolled at the Blake School in Minneapolis. At 14, in May 1943, Pirsig was awarded a high school diploma from the University of Minnesota's laboratory school, University High School (now Marshall-University High School) where he edited the school yearbook, the Bisbilla. He then entered the University of Minnesota to study biochemistry that autumn. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he described the central character, thought to represent himself, as being far from a typical student; he was interested in science as a goal in itself, rather than as a way to establish a career.

While doing laboratory work in biochemistry, Pirsig became greatly troubled by the existence of more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and that the number of hypotheses appeared unlimited. He could not find any way to reduce the number of hypotheses—he became perplexed by the role and source of hypothesis generation within scientific practice. The question distracted him to the extent that he lost interest in his studies and failed to maintain good grades. Finally, he was expelled from the university.