Karel Čapek studied aesthetics and French at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University between 1909-1915 and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in philosophy from the same faculty. He worked as a journal editor, director and script editor and led the Czechoslovak PEN Club. His literary works include novels (The Absolute at Large; War with the Newts) and plays (R.U.R.; The Life of the Insects; The Makropulos Affair) as well as short stories, travel diaries, essays, and translations of European works of literature. He died in December 1938, several months before the Gestapo could arrest him. Karel and his brother – the painter and poet Josef Čapek – invented the word “robot”.