Happy Birthday: Robert Maynard Pirsig (September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He is the author of the philosophical books Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991), and he co-authored On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Selected and Unpublished Writings (2022) along with his wife and editor, Wendy Pirsig.

Pirsig was born on September 6, 1928, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Harriet Marie Sjobeck and Maynard Pirsig. He was of German and Swedish descent. His father was a graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School, taught in that school from 1934, served as its dean from 1948 to 1955, and retired from teaching there in 1970. Pirsig senior subsequently taught at the William Mitchell College of Law until his retirement in 1993.

A precocious child with an alleged IQ of 170 at the age of nine, Pirsig skipped several grades at the Blake School in Minneapolis. In May 1943, he was awarded a high school diploma at the age of 14 by the University High School (later renamed Marshall-University High School), where he had edited the school yearbook, the Bisbilla. Pirsig then studied biochemistry at the University of Minnesota. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he describes the central character, thought to represent himself, as being an atypical student, interested in science in itself rather than as a professional career path.

In the course of his studies, Pirsig became intrigued by the multiplicity of putative causes for a given phenomenon, and increasingly focused on the role played by hypotheses in the scientific method and sources from which they originate. His preoccupation with these matters led to a decline in his grades and expulsion from the university.

In 1946, Pirsig enlisted in the United States Army and was stationed in South Korea until 1948. Upon his discharge from the Army, he lived for several months in Seattle, Washington, and then returned to the University of Minnesota, from which he received a bachelor's degree in 1950. He and his wife worked at the Nevada Club in Reno, Nevada and saved enough to move to Acayucan, Mexico with the intent to write a great book. He subsequently studied philosophy at Banaras Hindu University in India and the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods at the University of Chicago. In 1958 he earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

[My hippy Law teacher leant me her copy of 'Zen' in my late teens and said that it would "change my life". It didn't... but it certainly had a long term effect on me, even if some of it went completely over my head back then. I think my native ability was still just too raw back then. Actually, thinking back on it, a few teachers actually leant me books... They obviously saw potential in me...... I think its about time I re-read 'Zen' to see what I missed the first time.]