Theologian, educator, and social critic Ivan Illich (born 1926) sought bridges between cultures and explored the bases of people's views of history and reality.

Ivan Illich was born on September 4, 1926, to Ivan Peter and Ellen Illich in Vienna, Austria. His father came from an aristocratic and Christian family; his mother's family was Jewish. His childhood was spent growing up in the homes of grandparents and wherever his parents might be at the time. His father's career as a diplomat politically protected the Jewish members of his family during the 1930s; yet Ivan was classified as "half-Jew" in 1941 and his family secretly fled from a Hitler-controlled Austria to Italy. In Florence at the age of 15, his father and grandfather having died earlier from natural causes, Ivan began taking care of his mother and younger twin brothers.

He entered the University of Florence where he majored in chemistry. At the age...