Hogben escaped from a background of religious bigotry by the academic ladder and gained a major scholarship at Cambridge and graduated in 1916. During a noteworthy academic career, he found time to be active in the Fabian Society and in the London Labour Party. He also founded the Journal of Experimental Biology along with Julian Huxley and J.B.S. Haldane. He is most widely known for Mathematics for the Million and Science for the Citizen, and he played a big part in creating The Loom of Language.