Thomas Albert Sebeok was an internationally renowned semiotician who combined training in biology with his education in languages, linguistics, and anthropology. Sebeok was born November 9, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary. After immigrating to the United States in 1937 at his father's behest, he studied linguistics, anthropology, and literature at the University of Chicago (BA, 1941). He then received an MA in anthropology (1943) and PhD in Oriental Languages and Civilizations (1945) from Princeton University.

In 1943, Indiana University hired Sebeok to establish a large-scale, intensive language-training program for soldiers in Hungarian and Finnish. Indiana University had the largest Army Specialized Training Program contingent language program in the country, educating thousands of soldiers in (eventually) a dozen foreign languages. Sebeok's responsibilities included reporting to the United States Department of War in Washington, D.C., and New York City, authoring language instruction manuals, and working for the Intensive Language Training Program of the American Council of Learned Societies. When World War II ended in 1945, Sebeok's position abruptly ceased to exist. Indiana University President Herman B Wells asked Sebeok to stay on faculty to teach English composition and world literature courses.

In the postwar explosion of Asian studies programs in American universities, Sebeok established the first Uralic and Altaic language studies program at IU in 1956 with funds from the American Council of Learned Societies and United States Department of Education. In 1965 Sebeok worked with Denis Sinor and other scholars to establish an independent Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies within the College of Arts and Sciences. He served as chairman of the Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies (also named the Research Center for Language Sciences and Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics across the years) from 1956-1991.

Sebeok, who remarked that "boundaries among formal disciplines never alarmed me," combined his training in biology, linguistics, and anthropology as a pioneer in the field of semiotics. As semiotics grew as a discipline, he published the revolutionary text "Approaches to Semiotics" (1964) and became a key organizing founder of the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS). Along with Sebeok, IASS's founding members included Julia Kristeva, Yuri Lotman, and Roland Barthes. Upon its establishment in 1969, Sebeok was appointed editor-in-chief of its flagship journal Semiotica. He kept this position for thirty-two years, until his death in 2001. Sebeok brought his background in biology to the field of semiotics, and developed the significant and controversial field of zoosemiotics.

During his career at Indiana University, Sebeok published hundreds of texts, held dozens of visiting appointments at universities, toured the world speaking about semiotics, and earned major fellowships, grants, special appointments, and awards. His visiting appointments included positions at American universities such as University of Michigan, Canadian universities such as University of Toronto, and international universities such as University of Urbino and University of Buenos Aires. His most significant books included Style in Language (1960), How Animals Communicate (1977), Speaking of Apes: A Critical Anthology of Two-Way Communication with Man (1980, co-authored with Jean Umiker-Sebeok), and The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce (1988, co-authored with Umberto Eco). His full bibliography includes hundreds of articles, white papers, reviews, editorials, and anthology entries.

Sebeok's professional association memberships included fellow of the American Anthropological Association, Linguistic Society of America, American Folklore Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. He served on executive boards for the American Association for Machine Translation and Computational Linguistics and Animal Behavior Society. He served as a consultant for the Ford Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. In 1981 he worked with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to devise a communication system warning future citizens of the dangers of radioactive wastes. His resulting report, "Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia," has been analyzed and used by the United States Department of Energy's Human Interference Task Force.

By the time Sebeok retired from Indiana University in 1991, he was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus of linguistics and semiotics, was awarded the Distinguished Service Award from the American Anthropological Association, and was given the Presidential Medal of Excellence in research of international scope.

In September 1947, Sebeok married Eleanor Gorbea, with whom he had one child. They divorced, and Sebeok remarried Donna Jean Umiker (Jean Umiker-Sebeok), a semiotic scholar with whom he collaborated, in October 1972. They had two children. Thomas Sebeok died December 21, 2001 at his home in Bloomington.