Birth of Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco was born on 5 January 1932 in Alessandria. An Italian scholar and writer from Alessandria, Eco was a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna and wrote influential works on language, signs and mass culture, such as The Open Work and A Theory of Semiotics. He became internationally famous with his first novel, The Name of the Rose, a murder mystery set in a medieval monastery that combined historical detail with philosophy, which was later made into a film. Other novels include Foucault's Pendulum and Baudolino. He was also a prolific essayist and columnist and an avid collector of rare books, with a library of tens of thousands of volumes.

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