Isaac Asimov | |
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Born | Isaak Ozimov Between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920 Petrovichi, Russian SFSR |
Died | April 6, 1992 Brooklyn, New York City, New York, U.S. |
(aged 72)
Occupation | Writer, professor of biochemistry |
Nationality | Russian (early years), American |
Education | Columbia University, PhD in Biochemistry, 1948 |
Genre | Science fiction (hard SF, social SF), mystery |
Subject | Popular science, science textbooks, essays, literary criticism |
Literary movement | Golden Age of Science Fiction |
Years active | 1939–1992 |
Spouse | Gertrude Blugerman (1942–1973; divorced) Janet Opal Jeppson (1973–1992; his death) |
Children | David Asimov Robyn Joan Asimov |
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Isaac Asimov (/ˈaɪzᵻk ˈæzᵻmɒv/; born Isaak Ozimov; c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was a prolific writer, and wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification.
Asimov wrote hard science fiction and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are explicitly set in earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, beginning with Foundation's Edge, he linked this distant future to the Robot and Spacer stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson. He wrote hundreds of short stories, including the social science fiction "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.