Martin Julius Esslin OBE (6 June 1918 – 24 February 2002) was a Hungarian-born English producer, dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama, best known for coining the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his work of the same name (Theatre of the Absurd; 1961). This work has been called "the most influential theatrical text of the 1960s" by some reviewers.