Thomas Albert Sebeok (Hungarian: Sebők Tamás, pronounced [ˈʃɛbøːk ˈtɒmaːʃ]; November 9, 1920 – December 21, 2001) was a Hungarian-born American polymath,[1] semiotician, and linguist.

He attended secondary school at the famous Fasori Gimnázium, which educated notables such as John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner.

[10] In 1943, Sebeok started work at Indiana University in Bloomington, assisting the Amerindianist Carl Voegelin in managing the country's largest Army Specialized Training Program in foreign languages.

His transdisciplinary work and professional collaborations spanned the fields of anthropology, biology, folklore studies, linguistics, psychology, and semiotics.

[15] The report proposed a "folkloric relay system" and the establishment of an "atomic priesthood" of physicists, anthropologists, and semioticians to create and preserve a common cultural narrative of the hazardous nature of nuclear waste sites.

[10] The Sebeok Fellow Award "recognizes outstanding contributions to the development of the doctrine of signs" and is the highest honor given by the Semiotic Society of America.