Joe Biden spent fifty-two years in American public office, reached the presidency on his third attempt at the age of seventy-eight, and left it four years later after withdrawing from a re-election campaign already under way. He is now 83 and being treated for an aggressive, metastatic prostate cancer disclosed months after he left the White House.
Quick Bio / At a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. |
| Date of Birth | November 20, 1942 |
| Birthplace | Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Education | University of Delaware; Syracuse University College of Law |
| US Senator | Delaware, 1973–2009 |
| Vice President | 2009–2017, under Barack Obama |
| President | 46th President of the United States, 2021–2025 |
| Wife | Jill Biden, married 1977 |
| Health | Prostate cancer disclosed May 2025; treatment ongoing |
| Honour | Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction, 2017 |
Scranton, Delaware and an Early Senate Seat
Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on November 20, 1942, and moved with his family to Delaware as a child. He has spoken throughout his career about the stutter he worked to overcome as a boy.
He studied at the University of Delaware and took his law degree at Syracuse. In 1972, at twenty-nine, he won a Delaware seat in the United States Senate, becoming one of the youngest senators in the country’s history.
The 1972 Accident
Weeks after that election, his wife Neilia and their infant daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash. Their sons Beau and Hunter were seriously injured. Biden was sworn in at their hospital bedside and began the commuting routine between Wilmington and Washington that he maintained for decades.
He married Jill Jacobs in 1977. Their daughter Ashley was born in 1981.
Thirty-Six Years in the Senate
Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, presiding over the Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings — the latter of which he has since said he handled badly — and later chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, which became his principal area of expertise.
He ran for president in 1988, withdrawing after a plagiarism controversy, and again in 2008.
Vice President
Barack Obama selected Biden as his running mate in 2008, and he served two terms as vice president from 2009 to 2017, with a portfolio covering the stimulus rollout, Iraq policy and negotiations with Congress.
Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction in 2017.
His elder son Beau, the attorney general of Delaware, died of brain cancer in 2015 — a loss Biden cited as the reason he did not run in 2016.
The Presidency, 2021–2025
Legislation
Biden won the 2020 election and was inaugurated on January 20, 2021. His domestic record centres on four major laws: the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Foreign Policy
He completed the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in 2021, an operation whose chaotic final phase drew heavy criticism. He led the American response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, coordinating sanctions and military assistance with NATO allies.
Withdrawing From the 2024 Race
Biden sought a second term and, following a widely criticised debate performance and sustained pressure within his own party over his age and capacity, announced on July 21, 2024, that he would end his campaign. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
No sitting president had withdrawn from a race that late in the modern era. He left office on January 20, 2025.
The Cancer Diagnosis
May 2025
In May 2025, months after leaving office, Biden’s office disclosed that a small nodule found during a routine examination had been diagnosed as prostate cancer.
The disease was described as having a Gleason score of 9 — Grade Group 5, the most aggressive classification — with metastasis to the bone. It was also described as hormone-sensitive, which is what makes it treatable rather than immediately terminal.
Treatment
Biden underwent several weeks of radiation therapy at Penn Medicine Radiation Oncology in Philadelphia, completing that phase in 2025. Hormone therapy has continued alongside and after it.
His son Hunter said in a BBC interview that the cancer had spread into the bones and described the condition as painful and debilitating.
Biden has continued to make public appearances since the diagnosis. Metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer is a serious diagnosis that is nonetheless routinely managed over a period of years.
The Record
Biden’s fifty-two years in office spanned from the Nixon administration to the 2020s. Assessments of the presidency itself remain sharply divided along familiar lines, and it is far too early for a settled verdict.
What is not in dispute is the length of the career and the personal losses that ran through it.
More public-life profiles: Lester Holt and Judith Kent.
