Santiago Vilas was a professional journalist in his native Spain. He came to the United States of America as a press correspondent and remained as a professor of languages and literatures. He taught at several universities and received his PhD degree from Louisiana State University. He was elected member of three honor societies: the academic Phi Kappa Phi and, in languages and literatures, Sigma Delta Pi and Phi Sigma Iota (of which he was later voted international president and executive director). He published six books in two languages, among them the now classic El Humor y la Literatura Española Contemporánea (Humor and Spanish Contemporary Literature), where he formulates the thesis of humor as a philosophy of living; the college textbook España: Cultura y Civilización; the college textbook adaptation of the masterpiece of the theater of the absurd Tres Sombreros de Copa by Miguel Mihura; and the medical study Prostate Cancer Is Curable.
