Andres Bello

Andres de Jesus Maria y Jose Bello Lopez, who lived from November 29, 1781 to October 15, 1865, was a Venezuelan humanist, diplomat, poet, legislator, philosopher and philologist born in Caracas whose career spanned three phases, in Venezuela until 1810, in Britain until 1829, and in Chile until his death. He briefly tutored the young Simon Bolivar, took part in Venezuela's independence movement in 1810, served as a diplomat in London for nearly two decades, and in Chile founded and directed the University of Chile from 1843 until his death, while also authoring the influential Chilean Civil Code, promulgated in 1852 and enacted in 1855, and producing the first Spanish American grammar in 1847. His epic poems, including Las Silvas Americanas and La agricultura de la zona torrida, celebrated the culture of the New World in a classical style, and he is remembered as one of the foremost humanists of his era, combining classical scholarship with innovative legal and educational thought.