Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain was born on October 16, 1863, in Birmingham, England, son of politician Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914) and older half-brother of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940).

He was a British Conservative politician. He studied at Rugby School, Trinity College, Cambridge, the Paris Institute of Political Studies, and the University of Berlin before entering politics in the Conservative Party. After the election of 1895, Chamberlain was appointed Civil Lord of the Admiralty, holding that post until 1900, when he became Financial Secretary to the Treasury. In 1902, he was appointed to the Privy Council and promoted to the position of Postmaster General. Chamberlain became Chancellor of the Exchequer twice (1903-1905; 1919-1921). He served as Secretary of State for India (1915-1917), a Conservative Party leader in the House of Commons (1921–1922), Foreign Secretary (1924-1929), and First Lord of the Admiralty in 1931. Chamberlain shared the 1925 Nobel Prize for Peace with the US Vice President Charles G. Dawes, the Frenchman Aristide Briand, and the German Gustav Stresemann for work aimed at ensuring peace between the arch-rivals Germany and France. He was one of the few MPs supporting Winston Churchill's appeals for rearmament against the German threat in the 1930s and remained an active backbench MP until he died in 1937.

In 1906, he married Ivy Muriel Dundas (1878–1941). He died on March 16, 1937, in London, England.