Gilles Deleuze is a cult figure among thinking nomads, his prose a supple thing of beauty, rigor and erudition. He was born in 1925 in the 17th arrondisment of Paris, where he continued to live his entire life except for short periods of his youth. In 1962 he published Nietzsche and Philosophy. It was during this time that he began a long-standing friendship with Michel Foucault. In 1968 Deleuze published his doctoral thesis comprised of a major thesis, Différence et répétition and a minor thesis, Spinoza et le problems de l’expression (Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza). It was at Paris VII that he met Félix Guattari, who became his partner in writing the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980). Deleuze composed two masterpieces on film (The Movement-Image (1983) and The Time-Image (1985). He also wrote on Frances Bacon, Antonin Artaud, Franz Kafka, Henry Miller, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Kant, Spinoza, Bergson and Hume. He was a living embodiment of a whole-hearted approach to philosophy as a vital, pragmatic and daring profession, truly a magician of ideas and conceptual engagement. He took his own life on November 4th, 1995.