Sir Tom Stoppard, born Tomáš Sträussler in Czechoslovakia, was a British playwright and screenwriter who began as a journalist and drama critic before turning to plays in 1960. He was best known for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Arcadia, and his final play, Leopoldstadt, set in early twentieth-century Vienna, premiered in 2020. He wrote the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love, which won him an Academy Award, and was knighted in 1997. He died on 29 November 2025.
