Thomas Albert Sebeok is an American semiotician and linguist. It expands the field of semiotics to include non-man-made signal communication systems, introducing zoo- and biosemiotics.
Biography
He was born in Budapest on November 9, 1920. He left Hungary in 1936 to study at Magdalen College at Cambridge University. The following year he emigrated to the United States, where he received American citizenship in 1944. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1941, and a master’s degree (1943), and a doctorate (1945) from Princeton University.
Throughout his scientific career, he has participated in conferences and lectured at 33 universities in 17 countries around the world.
He was editor-in-chief of Semiotica magazine from 1969 to 2001.
Honorary Doctor of five universities – three in Europe, one in the United States, and one in Argentina. Among these honorary titles is the title “Honorary Doctor of the New Bulgarian University”, awarded to him on April 1, 1996. At the official ceremony of awarding the honorary title, Prof. Sibiak gave the academic lectures “In the Garden of Roses” and the speech “The Kinship of Medicine and semiotics. ”
He died on December 21, 2001, in Bloomington, Indiana.
Мain contributions:
- His work as an editor of numerous publications in this field.
and - The positive effect that his developments have in expanding the scope of semiotics to include biosemiotics.
