Robert Nozick

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Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971). His other work involved decision theory and epistemology.

Jeff Riggenbach tells the story of how Nozick was won (at least temporarily) over to libertarianism,

Ralph Raico, recalls first meeting or at least hearing about Robert Nozick in the very late 1950s or very early 1960s, through a mutual friend, who, like Nozick, was a graduate student of philosophy at Princeton. This mutual friend, Raico recalls, brought Nozick over to Rothbard's apartment one evening — "it must have been in the early 60s," he writes — for what turned out to be the first of many long nights of discussion and debate.

And those nights of discussion and debate were fruitful. … This became evident in the fall of 1974 … when a new book appeared on the scene amid considerable fanfare — a book called Anarchy, State & Utopia by Robert Nozick. In the opening pages, Nozick confessed to his readers that over the preceding several years he had "found myself becoming convinced of (as they are now often called) libertarian views" and that this process had been touched off by "a long conversation about six years ago with Murray Rothbard."