Walter A. Koch was Professor of English Philology and General Semiotics at Ruhr-University Bochum from 1968 through 1999. Since 1999 he has been Professor Emeritus. In 1984, he founded the Bochum Semiotic Colloquy ("BSC") which became engaged in interdisciplinary symposia and research. He has been editor of BBS (Bochumer Beiträge zur Semiotik) and BPX (Bochum Publications in Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics). His main interests are Semiotics, Cultural Semiotics, Theory of Literature and Poetry, Systems Theory, a General Theory of Evolution, Systems Philosophy. Among his publications: Varia Semiotica (Hildesheim: Olms, 1971), Poetry and Science (Tübingen: Narr, 1983), Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics (Bochum: Universitätsverlag, 1986), The Biology of Literature (Bochum: Universitätsverlag, 1993), The Roots of Literature (Bochum: Universitätsverlag, 1993), ed. with Gabriel Altmann: Systems: New Paradigms for the Human Sciences (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997).