José Echegaray y Eizaguirre (19 April 1832 – 14 September 1916)[1] was a Spanish civil engineer, mathematician,statesman, and one of the leadingSpanish dramatists of the last quarter of the 19th century. He was awarded the1904 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama".
He was born in Madrid on 19 April 1832.[2] His father, a doctor and institute professor of Greek,[3] was from Aragon and his mother was from Navarra. He spent his childhood in Murcia, where he finished his elementary school education. It was there, at the Murcia Institute, where he first gained his love for mathematics. While still a child he readGoethe,Homer, andBalzac, readings that alternated with those of mathematicians likeGauss,Legendre, andLagrange.
In order to earn enough money to attend theEscuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería de Caminos, Canales y Puertos (Engineering School of Roads, Channels and Ports), he moved at the age of fourteen to Madrid.[4] At the age of twenty, he left the Madrid School with a Civil Engineering degree, which he had obtained as first in his class, and he had to move to Almeria and Granada to begin working at his first job.[5]
In 1854 he began teaching a class at the Engineering School, working as a secretary there also. He taught mathematics,stereotomy,hydraulics,descriptive geometry, anddifferential and physical calculus from that year until 1868. From 1858 to 1860 he was also a professor at the Assistants' School of Public Works.
HisProblemas de geometría analítica (1865) andTeorías modernas de la física. Unidad de las fuerzas materiales (1867) were held in some regard. He became a member of the Society of Political Economy, helped to found the magazineLa Revista, and took a prominent part in propagatingfree trade doctrines in the press and on the platform.[5]
He was clearly marked out for office, and when therevolution of 1868 overthrew the monarchy, he resigned his post for a place in the revolutionary cabinet.[5]
Echegaray also entered politics later in his life. As a founding member of therepublicanRadical Democratic Party,[6] he enjoyed a career in the government sector, being appointed Minister of Education, of Public Works and Finance Minister successively between 1867 and 1874.[3] He retired from politics after theBourbon restoration in 1874.[5]
Theater had always been the love of José Echegaray's life. Although he had written earlier plays (La Hija natural andLa Última Noche, both in 1867), he truly became a dramatist in 1874.[5] His plays reflected his sense of duty, which had made him famous during his time in the governmental offices. Dilemmas centered on duty and morality are the motif of his plays. He replicated the achievements of his predecessors of theSpanish Golden Age, remaining a prolific playwright.
His most famous play isEl gran Galeoto, a drama written in the grand nineteenth century manner ofmelodrama. It is about the poisonous effect that unfounded gossip has on a middle-aged man's happiness. Echegaray filled it with elaborate stage instructions that illuminate what we would now consider a hammy style of acting popular in the 19th century.Paramount Pictures filmed it as a silent with the title changed toThe World and His Wife, and it was the basis for a later filmThe Great Galeoto. His most remarkable plays[citation needed] areO locura o santidad (Saint or Madman?, 1877);Mariana (1892);El estigma (1895);La duda, 1898; andEl loco Dios (God, the fool, 1900).
Among his other famous plays areLa esposa del vengador (1874) (The Avenger's Wife);En el puño de la espada (1875) (In the Sword's Handle);En el pilar y en la cruz (1878) (On the Stake and on the Cross); andConflicto entre dos deberes (1882) (Conflict of Two Duties).[3]
José Echegaray maintained constant activity until his death on 14 September 1916 in Madrid.[2] His extensive work did not stop growing in his old age: in the final stage of his life he wrote 25 or 30 mathematical physics volumes. At the age of 83 he commented:
I cannot die, because if I am going to write my mathematical physics encyclopedia, I need at least 25 more years.
Several streets in Spain are named after José Echegaray.Calle Echegaray in Madrid'sBarrio de las Letras is especially noteworthy.[8][9] In 1971 the Bank of Spain issued a 1000-peseta banknote in his honor.[10]
