Eco was born January 5, 1932, in Alessandria, a town east of Turin.
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He leaves a wife, Renate Ramge Eco, a German art teacher whom he married in 1962 and with whom he had a son and a daughter. His surname is reportedly an acronym of the Latin ex caelis oblatus, bestowed upon his grandfather by a city official.
Umberto Eco in his younger years. He also wrote children’s books, including “The Bomb and the General” (“La Bomba e il Generale”).
He was later professor emeritus and chairman of the Higher School of Humanities of the University of Bologna.
He continued to publish books throughout his life, his last novel, Numero Zero was released past year.
Though he found fame for blockbuster medieval mystery The Name of the Rose – which sold more than 10 million copies in 30 languages – he had been publishing works since the 1950s.
The book mixes detective story in a monastery of the XIV th century and scholarly allusions to philosophical and religious controversies of the Middle Ages and its unexpected success surprised its author as critical. It was adapted for the big screen by Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1986, starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater. They slowly become overly obsessed with it while the venture turns risky and tragic when some fanatics learn of it and come to believe that the trio has discovered the secret to the location of some lost treasure.
He had always loved storytelling and as a teenager wrote comic books and fantasy novels.
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Among his dozens of essays on semiotics, medieval aesthetics, linguistics and philosophy, two in particular gained enduring popularity with their analysis of cultural standards. He was, as the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera said, one of Italy’s most celebrated intellectuals.
