George Santayana

Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist. Brought to the U.S. in 1872 to be educated, he graduated from Harvard with a Ph.D. in 1889 and joined the staff in the philosophy department until 1912. A writer of great literary skills and wide-ranging interest, his first published work was "Sonnets and Other Verses" in 1894. A legacy enabled him to retire and he left the U.S. in 1912, living in France, Spain and England. After the end of WW I, he settled permanently in Rome.

Santayana expressed his major ideas in a series of five volumes, "The Life Of Reason." In poetry he was noted for his sonnets and he authored one novel entitled "The Last Puritan," 1935. He was awarded the Nicholas Murray Butler Gold Medal by Columbia University in 1945. His three-volume autobiography was published in 1944, 1945 and the last volume, posthumously in 1953. He had a lifelong, unrequited love for Bertrand Russell's straight brother, Frank.

Santayana died of stomach cancer on 26 September 1952 in Rome in a convent where he had found sanctuary during WW II.