Umberto Eco

(1932 - 2016)

Having received his PhD from the University of Turin in 1954, Umberto Eco published his first book, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, and began teaching at his alma mater in 1956. With the publication of Open Work in 1962, he emerged as one of the first literary critics to develop reader-response theory. His novel The Name of the Rose, a medieval murder mystery incorporating his interest in semiotics, was an international bestseller in 1980.