Thomas Lionel Hodgkin was a historian of African history. He was born on 3 April 1910 and was the elder son of historian Robert Hodgkin and Dorothy Forster. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he achieved a first-class degree in Greats (Classics) in 1932.

After graduating, he applied for a job at the Colonial Office with the hope of going to Palestine. After rejecting a position in the Gold Coast Colony, he went to Palestine on an archaeological dig before being offered a cadetship in the Palestine civil service. His time there made him very aware of the nature of Western and British imperialism. After he resigned, he wanted to stay to observe the aftermath of the April 1936 Arab uprising but was made to leave by the British administration. He returned to Britain in 1936 and joined the London Library and the Communist Party. He met his wife, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin, in 1937 when she was in London to photograph insulin at the Royal Institute. Shortly after, he moved to Cumberland to teach adult education and, after being rejected for military service on medical grounds, he worked for the Workers' Educational Association in north Staffordshire. In September 1945, he became secretary of the Oxford University delegacy for extra-mural studies which took him to the Gold Coast and Nigeria in 1947. This began his interest in African history, and he wrote for West Africa on the background to African nationalism. After leaving the delegacy in 1952, he travelled extensively in Africa. He published his book Nationalism in Colonial Africa in 1956, before turning to the subject of Islam in Africa.

He worked in several universities in America and Canada, and became director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in 1962. He became a senior research fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, and lecturer in the government of new states in 1965, where he supervised students from many countries.

He published several books during his life, including Nigerian Perspectives (1960), African Political Parties (1961), and Vietnam: The Revolutionary Path (1981). He also wrote an unpublished novel titled 'Qwert'.

He died on 25 March 1982. He was survived by his wife and their three children.

See the Dictionary of National Biography for more details.