Tagore was born in Calcutta and studied in London, and became one of the best known international figures of the intellectual world in the first decades of the 20th century. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 and was knighted in 1915. His philosophical works have religious and ethical themes, and their tendency is to try to unite and synthesize the best in apparently opposing positions, and especially in the traditions of the East and the West. Probably his best known book in the West is The Religion of Man, delivered as the Hibbert lectures in Oxford and published in 1931.