System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Isaac Asimov, Science fiction writer
January 02, 1920 - April 06, 1992
Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born American author and biochemist, a successful and highly prolific writer best known for his works of science fiction and for his science books for the layperson. He was one of the three grand masters of science fiction with Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein.
Asimov was born on January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi, Russia, to a Jewish family that emigrated to the United States when he was three years old. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York. His parents owned a candy store and everyone in the family was expected to work in it. He saw science fiction magazines in the store and began reading them. In his late teens, he began to write his own stories and soon was selling them to pulp magazines.
After leaving Boys High School in Brooklyn, an elite school in those days, Asimov studied chemistry at Columbia University, New York, where he graduated in 1939 and received his M.A. in 1941.
In 1942 Asimov married Gertrude Blugerman; they had two children. During WW II Asimov worked in the US Naval Air Experimental Station alongside the science fiction writers L. Sprague de Camp, and Robert A. Heinlein. After the end of the war Asimov served in the army as a corporal - he received his draft notice in September 1945. Asimov served eight months and twenty-six days. In 1948 he received his Ph. in biochemistry from Columbia University. Asimov's pseudo-dissertation, 'The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline', was published in 1948 in Astounding Science Fiction.
In 1949 Asimov joined the Boston University School of Medicine, where he was made an associate professor of biochemistry in 1955. He devoted himself to writing and focused mostly on non-fiction, publishing such works as, first novel, PEBBLE IN THE SKY (1950), THE INTELLIGENT MAN'S GUIDE TO SCIENCE (1960), and books on history and literary topics. The first nonfiction book Asimov wrote for the general public, THE CHEMICALS OF LIFE (1954), was published by Abelard-Schuman. Asimov remained an associate professor until 1979, and subsequently held the title of professor. Asimov had a heart attack in 1977 and in 1983 he had triple bypass surgery. The winter of 1989-90 Asimov spent in a hospital due to a congenital weakness of the mitral valve in the heart. Asimov's heart and kidney failure worsened and he died at New York University Hospital on April 6, 1992. He was 72. He was survived by his second wife, Janet, and his children from his first marriage.
