Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL (born 3 July 1937) is a British playwright. He has written plays such as The Coast of Utopia, Arcadia, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, and Rock 'n' Roll. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil and Shakespeare in Love.

Born Tomáš Straussler in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, Stoppard fled to Singapore with other Jews on 15 March 1939, the day that the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. In 1941, the family was evacuated to Darjeeling, India, to escape the Japanese invasion of Singapore. His father, Eugen Straussler, remained behind as a British army volunteer, and died in a Japanese prison camp after capture.

In India, Stoppard received an English education at the Mount Hermon School, Darjeeling. In 1945, his mother Martha married a British army major named Kenneth Stoppard, who gave the boys his English surname and moved the family with him to England after the war, in 1946. Stoppard attended the Dolphin School in Nottinghamshire, and later completed his education at Pocklington School in Yorkshire.