Umberto Eco

**Umberto Eco** (January 5, 1932 – February 19, 2016) was an Italian writer and professor of medieval history in Bologna.

Eco was born in 1932 in northern Italy.

As a student, he studied philosophy, history, literature, and educational sciences.
He finished his studies in 1954 with a doctoral thesis about Thomas Aquinas. In 1962, he married.

His career as an author began with _The Name of the Rose_ in 1980, after he had already written many academic papers.

## Biography

Eco was born on January 5, 1932 in Alessandria. His family had 13 sons. He studied philosophy and humanities at the University of Turin. He received a Ph.D. there.

Eco worked as a professor in different places. Starting in 1971, he held the chair of semiotics at the University of Bologna. At a university, a "chair" is the highest rank a professor can earn. He was also given honorary degrees by thirty different universities.

He had been named satrap of pataphysics for his humorous works.  One of his most important books is _How to Travel with a Salmon._

He was a member of UNESCO's Council of Sages. In 2000, he received the Princess of Asturias Award for Communications and Humanities.

Eco worked in the mass media as well, creating cultural programs. His interests were the Middle Ages, languages, and the classics. He was also an expert on James Bond.

On February 19, 2016, Eco died at his home in Milan, Italy, of pancreatic cancer. He was 84.

### Novels

- _Il nome della rosa_ (_The Name of the Rose_, 1980) - A historical novel set in the Middle Ages.  This novel made Eco famous after it was turned into a best-selling movie.
- _Il pendolo di Foucault_ (_Foucault's Pendulum_, 1988) - Three workers at a publishing house are trapped in their own fiction.
- _L'isola del giorno prima_ (_The Island of the Day Before_, 1994) - A nobleman from the 17th century gets trapped on a yacht and wonders about how time is passing.
- _Baudolino_ (2000) - An emperor mistakes a young peasant for his own child.  This is a picaresque novel (a novel whose main character is a dishonest person or a criminal.  This person tells their story in bits and pieces).
- _La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana_ (_The Mysterious Flame of the Queen Loana_, 2004) - A man who loses his memory tries to get it back.  This novel is set in the times of Eco's youth.

### Other works

- _Opera Aperta_
- _Minimal Diary _
- _Kant and the Ornithorhynchus_
- _Semiotics and philosophy of the language_
- _The firm_
- _Art and Beauty in the Medieval Aesthetic_
- _The Limits of Interpretation_
- _Six Walks for the Narrative Forests_
- _Lector in fabula_
- _Apocalyptics and Integrates_
- _On Literature_
- _Searching the Perfect Language_
- _History of Beauty_
- _On Ugliness_

## Other websites

- Foundation Prince of Asturias, Prince of Asturias of Communication and Humanities 2000

## Infobox (philosopher)

- **region**: Western Philosophy
- **era**: 20th-century philosophy, 20th / 21st-century philosophy
- **image**: Umberto Eco 04.jpg
- **caption**: Umberto Eco in 2005.
- **name**: Umberto Eco
- **birth place**: Alessandria, Piedmont, Italy
- **death place**: Milan, Italy
- **school tradition**: Continental philosophy
- **main interests**: Semiotics
- **notable ideas**: The "open work" (_opera aperta_), the "intention of the reader" ("intentio lectoris"), the "limits" of interpretation
- **influences**: Thomas Aquinas, Charles Sanders Peirce, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Conan Doyle
- **signature**: Umberto Eco signature.svg