Mircea Eliade ( 1907 – 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. As a tool for interpreting religion, his theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved a far more widely applicable than the older term theophany, which denotes the manifestation of a god. His most enduring and influential contribution to religious studies was possibly his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate hierophanies, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them. In academia, the Eternal Return has become one of the most widely accepted ways of understanding the purpose of myth and ritual. His literary works belong to the fantasy and autobiographical genre; the best known are the autobiographical novels Maitreyi (La Nuit Bengali or Bengal Nights), the novella Domnişoara Christina (Miss Christina), and the short stories Secretul doctorului Honigberger (The Secret of Dr. Honigberger) and La Ţigănci (With the Gypsy Girls).

Early in his life, Eliade was a noted journalist and essayist, a disciple of Romanian far right philosopher and journalist Nae Ionescu, and member of the literary society Criterion. He also served as cultural attaché to the United Kingdom and Portugal. Several times during the late 1930s, Eliade publicly expressed his support for the Iron Guard, a fascist and antisemitic political organization; since the 1970s, his position at the time was the frequent topic of criticism.

Remarkable for his vast erudition, Eliade had fluent command of five languages (Romanian, French, German, Italian, and English) and less command of three others (Hebrew, Persian, and Sanskrit). He was elected postmortem member of the Romanian Academy.

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