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Revision as of 20:57, 20 August 2002

Isaac Asimov (January 2, 1920 - April 6, 1992) was an American author and biochemist, a highly successful and extraordinarily prolific writer of science fiction and of science books for the layperson. He published about 500 volumes.

Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russia but his family emigrated to the United States when he was three years old. He grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., graduating from Columbia University in 1939 and taking a Ph.D. there in 1948. He then joined the faculty of Boston University, with which he remained associated thereafter.

Asimov began contributing stories to science fiction magazines in 1939 and in 1950 published his first book, Pebble in the Sky. His trilogy of novels, Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation (1951-1953), which recounts the collapse and rebirth of a vast interstellar empire in the universe of the future, is his most famous work of science fiction.

In the short-story collection I, Robot (1950), he developed a set of ethics for robots (see Three Laws Of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers' treatment of the subject.

His other novels and collections of stories included:

The short story, The Bicentennial Man was made into a movie starring Robin Williams. His Nightfall (1941) is thought by many to be the finest science fiction short story ever written.

Among Asimov's books on various topics in science, written with lucidity and humour, are:

He also published two volumes of autobiography: In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980). A third autobiography I. Asimov, a memoir was published in April 1994. The epilogue was written by his second wife, Janet Asimov (nee Jepson), shortly after his death.

Asimov also wrote several essays on the social contentions of his day, including "Thinking About Thinking" and "Science: Knock Plastic" (1967).

Isaac Asimov died on April 6, 1992 after getting infected with the HIV virus during a 1983 blood transfusion. The fact that AIDS was the cause of his death was only revealed ten years later in Janet Asimov's biography It's Been a Good Life.