George Bernard Shaw (July 26, 1856 – November 2, 1950), known as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, and socialist activist.
Born in Dublin to a Protestant family, he moved to London in 1876, struggled as a novelist and journalist, then revolutionized theater with witty, idea-driven plays like Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). A Fabian socialist, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and an Oscar for Pygmalion's screenplay (1938). His influence on Western culture spanned nearly seven decades.