Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane

The Right Honourable The Viscount Haldane KT OM PC FRS FSA FBA
Leader of the House of Lords
In office 22 January 1924 – 3 November 1924
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by	The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
Succeeded by	The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain
In office 22 January 1924 – 6 November 1924
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by	The Viscount Cave
Succeeded by	The Viscount Cave
In office 10 June 1912 – 25 May 1915
Prime Minister	H. H. Asquith
Preceded by	The Earl Loreburn
Succeeded by	The Lord Buckmaster
Secretary of State for War
In office 10 December 1905 – 12 June 1912
Prime Minister	Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman H. H. Asquith
Preceded by	H. O. Arnold-Forster
Succeeded by	Colonel J.E.B. Seely
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Hereditary peerage 27 March 1911 – 19 August 1928
Member of Parliament for Haddingtonshire
In office 18 December 1885 – 27 March 1911
Preceded by	Hugo Charteris
Succeeded by	John Hope
Personal details
Born	(1856-07-30)30 July 1856 Edinburgh, Scotland
Died	19 August 1928(1928-08-19) (aged 72) Auchterarder, Scotland
Nationality	British
Political party	Liberal (1879–1923) Labour (1923–1928)
Education	University of Göttingen University of Edinburgh
Profession	Barrister

Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane, KT, OM, PC, FRS, FSA, FBA (/ˈhɔːldeɪn/; 30 July 1856 – 19 August 1928) was a British lawyer and philosopher and an influential Liberal and later Labour politician. He was Secretary of State for War between 1905 and 1912 during which time the "Haldane Reforms" of the British Army were implemented. As an intellectual he was fascinated with German thought. That led to his role in seeking detente with Germany in 1912 in the Haldane Mission. The mission was a failure and tensions with Berlin forced London to work more closely with Paris.

Raised to the peerage as Viscount Haldane in 1911, he was Lord Chancellor between 1912 and 1915, when he was forced to resign because of allegations of German sympathies. He later joined the Labour Party and once again served as Lord Chancellor in 1924 in the first Labour administration. Apart from his legal and political careers, Haldane was also an influential writer on philosophy, in recognition of which he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1914.^[1]