Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1942. After his father’s business setbacks, the family lived with his maternal grandparents before moving to Delaware, where his father sold used cars. Biden gave up alcohol for life after seeing its effects in his family and worked through a severe stutter by reciting Emerson and Yeats in front of a mirror. At Syracuse law school he failed a course over a plagiarism incident. In 1972, at 29, he challenged Republican J. Caleb Boggs from 30 points behind, with his sister Valerie running the campaign, and won by about 3,000 votes to become the seventh youngest senator in U.S. history.

Weeks later his wife Neilia and daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash, and sons Beau and Hunter were injured. Persuaded by Mike Mansfield to stay, he commuted daily by train for 36 years. As Judiciary chair he oversaw the Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings, and he wrote both the 1994 crime bill and the Violence Against Women Act. After failed runs in 1988 and 2008 he served as Barack Obama’s vice president, won the presidency in 2020, and signed the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. He became the first president to turn 80 in office and withdrew from the 2024 race after a widely criticized debate.

• His 1988 campaign ended amid a speech plagiarism controversy, followed by two brain aneurysms serious enough that he received last rites.
• He later expressed regret to Anita Hill for how she was treated in the 1991 Thomas hearings.
• He negotiated the 2012 fiscal cliff deal with Mitch McConnell and endorsed same-sex marriage on Meet the Press that year.
• His son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at 46, and Biden sat out the 2016 race.
• After promising not to intervene, he issued a sweeping pardon for Hunter Biden in late 2024.