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José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (Spanish: [xoˈse riˈsal, -ˈθal], Tagalog: [hoˈse ɾiˈsal]; June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is considered a national hero (pambansang bayani) of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain. He was executed by the Spanish colonial government for the crime of rebellion after the Philippine Revolution broke out; it was inspired by his writings. Though he was not actively involved in its planning or conduct, he ultimately approved of its goals which eventually resulted in Philippine independence. Rizal is widely considered one of the greatest heroes of the Philippines and has been recommended to be so honored by an officially empaneled National Heroes Committee. However, no law, executive order or proclamation has been enacted or issued officially proclaiming any Filipino historical figure as a national hero. He wrote the novels Noli Me Tángere (1887) and El filibusterismo (1891), which together are taken as a national epic, in addition to numerous poems and essays. Early life José Rizal was born on June 19, 1861 to Francisco Rizal Mercado y Alejandro and Teodora Alonso Realonda y Quintos in the town of Calamba in Laguna province. He had nine sisters and one brother. His parents were leaseholders of a hacienda and an accompanying rice farm held by the Dominicans. Both their families had adopted the additional surnames of Rizal and Realonda in 1849 after Governor General Narciso Clavería y Zaldúa decreed the adoption of Spanish surnames among the Filipinos for census purposes (though they already had Spanish names). Like many families in the Philippines, the Rizals were of mestizo origin. José's patrilineal lineage could be traced to Fujian in China through his father's ancestor Lam-co, a Hokkien Chinese merchant who immigrated to the Philippines in the late 17th century. Lam-co traveled to Manila from Xiamen, China, possibly to avoid the famine or plague in his home district, and more probably to escape the Manchu invasion during the transition from Ming to Qing. He decided to stay in the islands as a farmer. In 1697, to escape the bitter anti-Chinese prejudice that existed in the Philippines, he converted to Catholicism, changed his name to Domingo Mercado and married the daughter of Chinese friend Augustin Chin-co. On his mother's side, Rizal's ancestry included Chinese and Tagalog. His mother's lineage can be traced to the affluent Florentina family of Chinese mestizo families originating in Baliuag, Bulacan. He also had Spanish ancestry. Regina Ochoa, a grandmother of his mother, Teodora, had mixed Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog blood. His maternal grandfather was a half-Spanish engineer named Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo. José Rizal's maternal great-great-grandfather, Eugenio Ursua, was of Japanese ancestry.From an early age, José showed a precocious intellect. He learned the alphabet from his mother at 3, and could read and write at age 5. Upon enrolling at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, he dropped the last three names that made up his full name, on the advice of his brother, Paciano and the Mercado family, thus rendering his name as "José Protasio Rizal". Of this, he later wrote: "My family never paid much attention [to our second surname Rizal], but now I had to use it, thus giving me the appearance of an illegitimate child!" This was to enable him to travel freely and disassociate him from his brother, who had gained notoriety with earlier links to Filipino priests Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora (popularly known as Gomburza), who had been accused and executed for treason. José, as "Rizal", soon distinguished himself in poetry writing contests, impressing his professors with his facility with Castilian and other foreign languages, and later, in writing essays that were critical of the Spanish historical accounts of the pre-colonial Philippine societies. By 1891, the year he finished his second novel El filibusterismo, his second surname had become so well known that, as he writes to another friend, "All my family now carry the name Rizal instead of Mercado because the name Rizal means persecution! Good! I too want to join them and be worthy of this family name..." Education Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna, before he was sent to Manila. He took the entrance examination to Colegio de San Juan de Letran, as his father requested, but he enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila. He graduated as one of the nine students in his class declared sobresaliente or outstanding. He continued his education at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila to obtain a land surveyor and assessor's degree and simultaneously at the University of Santo Tomas, where he studied a preparatory course in law and finished with a mark of excelente, or excellent. He finished the course of Philosophy as a pre-law.Upon learning that his mother was going blind, he decided to switch to medicine at the medical school of Santo Tomas, specializing later in ophthalmology. He received his four-year practical training in medicine at Ospital de San Juan de Dios in Intramuros. In his last year at medical school, he received a mark of sobresaliente in courses of Patologia Medica (Medical Pathology), Patología Quirúrgica (Surgical Pathology) and Obstretics. Although known as a bright student, Rizal had some difficulty in some science subjects in medical school such as Física (Physics) and Patología General (General Pathology). Without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his brother Paciano, he traveled alone to Madrid in May 1882 and studied medicine at the Universidad Central de Madrid. There he earned the degree, Licentiate in Medicine. He also attended medical lectures at the University of Paris and the University of Heidelberg. In Berlin, he was inducted as a member of the Berlin Ethnological Society and the Berlin Anthropological Society under the patronage of the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow. Following custom, he delivered an address in German in April 1887 before the Anthropological Society on the orthography and structure of the Tagalog language. He wrote a poem to the city, "A las flores del Heidelberg", which was both an evocation and a prayer for the welfare of his native land and the unification of common values between East and West. At Heidelberg, the 25-year-old Rizal completed his eye specialization in 1887 under the renowned professor, Otto Becker. There he used the newly invented ophthalmoscope (invented by Hermann von Helmholtz) to later operate on his mother's eye. From Heidelberg, Rizal wrote his parents: "I spend half of the day in the study of German and the other half, in the diseases of the eye. Twice a week.... Discover the Jose Rizal popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jose Rizal books.