Friedrich Hayek was an Austrian Libertarian who believed in the free market, and opposed intervention. He was born on May 8, 1899, in Vienna, capital of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire. He served in WWI as a paratrooper and nearly died in the war. In addition to this, he survived the Spanish Flu. The tragedies he saw in WWI, the chaos of war, led him to a desire to make the world a better place.
The fact that Hayek survived meant that he was able to become the notable libertarian he was during his later decades. He was acquainted with another Austrian Libertarian, Ludwig von Mises, in the 1920s. This shaped him to become a Libertarian himself. He rose to prominence in the 1930s, and when Germany and Austria became grappled with Hitler’s power he moved to Great Britain. There, in 1944, he wrote The Road to Serfdom, which explains the consequences of socialism, and the consequences of putting too much trust in our politicians.
If everyone read The Road to Serfdom, we would have the answers we wanted for how to fix our present world problems. The governments all over the world to this day are dishonest, corrupt, and authoritarian. Even the most democratic nations of today have developed larger governments, which means less freedom for the rest of us. This is what Hayek hated; What he fought against.
He lived in the United States during the 1950s, and moved back to Britain in the early 60s. He said his heart belonging to Europe. There, he gave lectures about his philosophy, and participated in interviews and talks with numerous people throughout the 70s and 80s. He greatly influenced the thinking of Margaret Thatcher and Reagan, and he even met them in person. He lived to see the USSR collapse under the very system Hayek had criticized throughout his life. On March 23, 1992, he was dead.
Learn more about Hayek on the wikipedia page, or dig down more visiting Libertarianism.org, mises.org, cafehayek.com, or other various sites.