Isaac Asimov biography

Isaac Asimov was born in Petrovichi in the then so-called the Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of Russia on January 2, 1920, although some biographers have indicated October 4, 1919, as the date of his birth, because his mother modified it so that he could enter the public education one year earlier. He was a writer who managed to stand out especially in the field of science fiction, scientific dissemination, and history, in addition to this he was also a professor of biochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Boston, and he had a great knowledge about the Natural Sciences.

He was the firstborn of Judah Asimov and Anna Rachel Berman, two Judeo-Russians. At three years old, on January 11, 1923, they moved to New York, thus making the childhood of Isaac take place in the neighborhood of Brooklyn, inhabited mostly by Hebrew citizens. Since then, Asimov demonstrates his great intellectual capacity and independence by learning to read by himself at the age of four, although it is clear that he strangely never learned the language of his parents.

His childhood was also marked by years of study while he worked in the candy stores that his father rented in the neighborhood, which because of his progress were changing place, but it was precisely in these places where the young Isaac had his first encounter with science fiction thanks to the magazine shelves, becoming a devouring reader of these without knowing that later his name would appear on the covers.

“Violence is the last resource of the incompetent” Isaac Asimov

Such intellectual precocity generated in his parents the desire to facilitate an early school education, hence the fact that his mother had falsified her birth date in 1925 to make it possible to enter a public school in New York. He later entered the East New York Junior High School to complete his high school, which remained until 1930 and then went to the Boys High School, which completed with great brilliance his high school studies in 1935 with only fifteen years of age. That same year, he enrolled in the New York University of Columbia, in which he obtained four years later the title of Bachelor in Chemistry. Later, he made other higher studies that allowed him to also graduate in Sciences and Arts and do a Ph.D. in Philosophy and in 1939 he also graduated as a biochemist at Columbia University.

Although his parents expected him to practice medicine, Asimov was rejected at several universities in New York for this career, which is why he chose the aforementioned studies and also decided that his professional future would necessarily involve the cultivation of literature. The reason why, since he was nineteen years, he had started writing and had already published several of his stories of science fiction in magazines of this genre, better known then as pulp magazines.

1942 was extremely significant in the life of Asimov, as he left for the city of Philadelphia to obtain a job as a chemical researcher in the shipyards of the US Navy, a job he maintained during the course of World War II and that he abandoned once finished. That same year he married Gertrudis Blugerman, with whom he would have two children: David and Robyn. Six years later, in 1948, he obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry, which allowed him access to the University of Boston where he remained as an associate, but without being able to practice as a professor but as a teacher’s assistant, a right that was granted later, but in 1958 the university stopped paying the salary. However, the income from his work as a writer was then greater than those obtained with university teaching, so Asimov remained in the faculty as an associate professor.

“If knowledge can create problems, it is not with ignorance that we can solve them” Isaac Asimov

In 1973 he separated from his wife Gertrude to marry again that same year with Janet Opal Jeppson, with whom he had no offspring. He was promoted to full professor in 1979, and by then he had taught the chair of Biochemistry for almost a decade thanks to the great passion he felt for teaching. At the beginning of the nineties, as a result of surgery for a serious prostatic condition, Asimov was forced to reduce his intense creative and research activity. Thus, death happened to him in the city where he lived for almost your life in the early spring of 1992 as a result of heart failure and kidney failure.

Ten years later, in 2002 and in his own biography, Janet, his second wife, revealed that the writer had contracted AIDS in 1983 after receiving a transfusion of blood infected with HIV during a vascular bypass operation. In the Mugar Memorial Library of the University of Boston, his personal documents from the years 1965 onwards are archived, where they occupy 464 boxes in 71 meters of shelves.

It should also be noted that, in 1985, Isaac Asimov was elected Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, a position he held until the end of his days and whose successor was his friend and colleague: Kurt Vonnegut. Added to this, he was also an honorary vice president of the Mensa club until the death of its director Margot Seitelman in November 1989. Asimov’s most famous work is the Foundation Series, also known as the Trilogy or Trantor Cycle, which is part of a total of more than 400 volumes, among which are works of mystery, fantasy, and even non-fiction texts. It is considered one of the “three great” writers of science fiction, along with A. Heinlein and C. Clarke.

Most of his books try to explain scientific concepts following a historical line and giving us the etymologies of technical words. In 1981 the asteroid 5020 was named: “Asimov” in his honor. As curious data it is known that the great writer of science fiction was afraid to fly by plane (acrophobia), which is why he only did it twice and, added to this, he suffered claustrophobia. His most notable works are the aforementioned: Saga of the Foundation (16 books) The Robots Series, Anochecer (1990-1991), New Science Guide (1984) and I, Robot (1950), of the latter there is a recognized cinematographic adaptation of 2004, directed by Alex Proyas and starring Will Smith.

It is possible to divide Asimov’s career into two stages. Thus, in his early years, the dominant theme was science fiction, which began with short stories in 1939, a period that lasted until 1958. The second stage of its activity in science fiction began in 1982, since then and until his last days, he would publish many sequels of his already written novels. It is estimated at 429 books written by Asimov.