José Vasconcelos Calderón (Oaxaca, February 27, 1882-Mexico City, June 30, 1959) was a Mexican lawyer, politician, writer, educator, public official, and philosopher. Author of a series of autobiographical novels that portray singular details of the long process of decomposition of the Porfiriato, of the development and triumph of the Mexican Revolution and of the beginning of the stage of the Mexican post-revolutionary regime that was called "institution building". He was appointed the first Secretary of Public Education in the country and rector of the National University decorated as Doctor Honoris Causa by the same institution and by those of Chile, Guatemala and other Latin American ones. He was also a member of El Colegio Nacional and the Mexican Academy of Language.