Novelist and intellectual Umberto Eco died of cancer late on Friday, The Guardian reported. A full-time academic, Eco taught at University of San Marino, Harvard University and later at Bologna University, and worked on semiotics, media studies, literary criticism and anthropology. He was, however, best known for his 1980’s novel The Name of The Rose, which was later made into a film starring British actor Sean Connery. The historical mystery combined semiotics, literary theory, medieval studies and biblical analysis.

Despite his success as a fiction writer, Eco once said, “I am a philosopher; I write novels on weekends". He was born in the northern Italian city of Alessandria, and later studied at the University of Turin. He wrote hundreds of essays and books in his lifetime, releasing the novel Year Zero in 2015.