Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), born in Buenos Aires and educated in Geneva during World War I where he learned French and German, was a polyglot omnivorous reader. Returning to Argentina, he spearheaded avant-garde Ultraism before serving as Director of the National Library from 1955 to 1973.

Afflicted by hereditary blindness that left him completely sightless by his mid-fifties, Borges famously noted God's 'splendid irony' in gifting him 800,000 books and darkness at the same time. Through miniature prose fictions (*ficciones*) resembling philosophical essays or detective reviews, Borges invented metaphysical concepts: The Library of Babel (an infinite library containing all possible combinations of letters), The Garden of Forking Paths (anticipating quantum mechanics and hypertext), and The Aleph (a point in space containing all points in the universe simultaneously). Borges chose to spend his final months in Geneva, where he was buried.