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 Scott Joplin (between July 1867 and January 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an American composer and pianist. He achieved fame for his unique ragtime compositions, and was dubbed the "King of Ragtime." During his brief career, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first pieces, the Maple Leaf Rag, became ragtime's first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag.

He was born into a musical African-American family of laborers in eastern Texas, and developed his musical knowledge with the help of local teachers. He traveled around the Southern States of America as an itinerant musician, and went to Chicago just as ragtime became a national craze after the World Fair of 1897. His composition in 1899 of the Maple Leaf Rag brought him fame, and had a profound influence on subsequent writers of ragtime. It also brought the composer a steady income for life with royalties of one cent per sale, equivalent to $26 cents per sale in current value. During his lifetime Joplin did not reach this level of success again and frequently had financial problems, which contributed to the loss of his first opera, A Guest of Honor. He continued to write ragtime compositions, and moved to New York in 1907. He attempted to go beyond the limitations of the musical form which made him famous, without much monetary success. His second opera, Treemonisha, was not received well at its partially staged performance in 1911. He died from complications of tertiary syphilis in 1917.Joplin's music was rediscovered and returned to popularity in the early 1970s with the release of a million-selling album of Joplin's rags recorded by Joshua Rifkin, followed by the Academy award–winning movieThe Sting which featured several of his compositions, such as The Entertainer. The opera Treemonisha was finally produced in full to wide acclaim in 1972. In 1976 Joplin was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize.