Isaac
Asimov
Isaac
Asimov, (b. January 2, 1920, Petrovichi,
Russia—d. April 6, 1992, New York, New
York, U.S.), American author and
biochemist, a highly successful and
prolific writer of science fiction and
of science books for the layperson. He
published about 500 volumes.
Asimov
was brought to the United States at age
three. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York,
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 (1951–53), 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; filmed 2004),
he developed a set of ethics for robots
and intelligent machines that greatly
influenced other writers’ treatment of
the subject. His other novels and
collections of stories included The
Stars, like Dust (1951), The Currents of
Space (1952), The Caves of Steel (1954),
The Naked Sun (1957), Earth Is Room
Enough (1957), Foundation’s Edge (1982),
and The Robots of Dawn (1983). 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 The
Chemicals of Life (1954), Inside the
Atom (1956), The World of Nitrogen
(1958), Life and Energy (1962), The
Human Brain (1964), The Neutrino (1966),
Science, Numbers, and I (1968), Our
World in Space (1974), and Views of the
Universe (1981). He also published two
volumes of autobiography.
