Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850 -1937) was a Czech statesman, sociologist and philosopher, who as the keenest advocate of Czechoslovak independence during WWI became the first President and founder of Czechoslovakia.Masaryk was born to a working-class family in the predominantly Catholic city of Hodonín, Moravia. His father Jozef Masaryk, a carter, was a Slovak from the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary, and his mother Terezie Masaryková (née Kropáčková) was from Moravia.

As a youth he worked as a blacksmith. He studied in Brno, Vienna (1872-1876 philosophy with Franz Brentano) and Leipzig (with Wilhelm Wundt). In 1882, he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in the Czech part of the University of Prague. The following year he founded Athenaeum, a magazine devoted to Czech culture and science. He wrote some works on history, exposing as fraudulent old Czech mythological poems called Rukopisy královedvorský a zelenohorský, supposedly dating from the early Middle Ages. This gained him the hate of some influential people who believed that the poems were genuine. During the Hilsner Trial Masaryk opposed racial prejudice by publicly defending a Jew accused of ritual murder; this too resulted in a wave of hate toward him.

Masaryk served in the Reichsrat (Austrian Parliament) from 1891 to 1893 in the Young Czech Party and again from 1907 to 1914 in the Realist Party, but he did not campaign for Czech independence from Austria-Hungary. When the First World War broke out, he had to flee the country to avoid arrest for treason, going to Geneva, to Italy, and then to England, where he started to agitate for Czech independence. He became Professor of Slav Research at King's College in London lecturing on "The problem of small peoples". In 1916 he went to France to convince the French government of the necessity of disintegrating Austria-Hungary. After the February Revolution in 1917 he proceeded to Russia to help organize Slavic resistance to the Austrians, so-called Czechoslovak Legions. In 1918 he travelled to the United States, where he convinced President Woodrow Wilson of the rightness of his cause. On October 18, 1918, Masaryk, standing on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., proclaimed the independence of Czechoslovakia.

With the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Allies recognized Masaryk as head of the Provisional Czech government, and in 1920 he was elected the first President of Czechoslovakia. He won re-election twice subsequently, and held office until December 14, 1935, when he resigned for health reasons. Masaryk enjoyed almost legendary authority among the Czech people.

Masaryk married Charlotte Garrigue, a Protestant American, from whom he took his middle name. His son, Jan Masaryk, served as Foreign Minister in the Czechoslovak government-in-exile (1940-1945) and in the governments of 1945 to 1948. Masaryk died from natural causes in 1937 at the age of 87.