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.

 More famous works 
 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

 References 

 Other websites 

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

Category:1932 births
Category:2016 deaths
Category:Deaths from pancreatic cancer
Category:20th-century Italian people
Category:Italian philosophers
Category:Italian novelists
Category:Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Category:Semioticians
Category:Writers from Piedmont
Category:People from Alessandria
Category:Former Roman Catholics