Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, was born in Alessandria, Piedmont, on January 5, 1932. It is rumored that the surname "Eco" is an acronym for "Ex Caelis Oblatus," meaning "a gift from the heavens." He pursued studies in medieval philosophy and literature, earning his doctorate in philosophy in 1954 with a thesis on Thomas Aquinas. From 1988, he served as the president of the International Center for Semiotic Studies at the University of San Marino. In 1965, he was appointed professor of Visual Communications in Florence, and in 1966, professor of Semiotics in Milan. In 1971, the University of Bologna offered him the position of full professor of Semiotics, and in 1974, Eco organized the International Association for Semiotic Studies. He was also the director of the journal "VS." During the 1970s, he began writing novels, starting with "The Name of the Rose," which won the Strega Prize in 1981 and the Medicis Etranger in 1982, selling millions of copies worldwide. Eco spent his time with his wife and two children between his home in Milan (an apartment-labyrinth with a library of 30,000 books) and his country house in Rimini. He was fluent in five languages, including Ancient Greek and Latin, which he frequently used in his scientific and literary works. From the beginning of his career, he received numerous honors and achieved dozens of publishing successes. His treatises include: "Opera aperta" (1962), "La struttura assente" (1968), "A Theory of Semiotics" (1975), "Lector in fabula" (1979). He debuted as a novelist in 1980 with "The Name of the Rose," followed by "Foucault's Pendulum" in 1988. He passed away on February 19, 2016, at the age of 84. (photo: Isolde Ohlbaum)