Ravi Zacharias (26 March 1946-19 May 2020) was an Indian-American evangelical Christian philosopher and author. Born in Madras, Tamil Nadu, India in 1946, he was raised in Delhi in an Anglican family; however, he was an agnostic for much of his youth. While hospitalized after a suicide attempt at the age of 17, he was given a Bible by a local Christian worker and became an evangelical. In 1971, he travelled to South Vietnam to evangelize to US soldiers and Viet Cong prisoners amid the Vietnam War, and he preached in Cambodia in 1974 before the Khmer Rouge seizure of power. Zacharias became an itinerant preacher, academic, philosopher, and author, and he also befriended several Republican politicians, served on Marco Rubio's pro-life "Dignity of Life" advisory panel during the 2016 presidential election, and was associated with the social conservative Focus on the Family organization. He died of cancer in Atlanta, Georgia in 2020.