Henry Calderwood was born on May 10, 1830, in Peebles, Scotland.

He was a Scottish minister, philosopher, and author. He attended the Royal High School in Edinburgh before entering the University of Edinburgh. He studied for the ministry of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and in 1856, he was ordained pastor of the Greyfriars Church, Glasgow. He also served as an examiner in Mental Philosopher at the University of Glasgow from 1861 to 1864, and from 1866 he taught the moral philosophy classes at that university. In 1868, he left the parish ministry to become Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh where he remained until his death in 1897. In 1869, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He published several books on a wide variety of philosophical, religious, and educational subjects. His first and most famous work was “The Philosophy of the Infinite” (1854). He wrote “A Handbook of Moral Philosophy” as a textbook for students in Edinburgh. His other books “On the Relations of Mind and Brain, Science and Religion” and “The Evolution of Man's Place in Nature” were devoted to different aspects of the science/religion debate which dominated much of the world of ideas in the later 19th century Scotland. Among his religious works the best-known is his “Parables of Our Lord”, and just before his death he finished a “Life of David Hume” in the Famous Scots Series. He was the first chairman of the Edinburgh School Board, a philanthropist, temperance campaigner, and a Liberal Unionist at the time of the Home Rule Bill. He was awarded the honorary degree of LL.D. by Glasgow in 1865.

In 1857, he married Anne Hutton Leadbetter. He died on November 19, 1897, in Edinburgh, Scotland.