Isaac Asimov, (born January 2, 1920, Petrovichi, Russia—died 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 wrote or edited about 500 volumes, of which the most famous are those in the Foundation and robot series.

Asimov was brought to the United States at age three. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Columbia University in 1939. During World War II, he worked at the Naval Aviation Experimental Station in Philadelphia along with science-fiction authors Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp. After the war, he took a Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia 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. He sold his first story, “Marooned off Vesta” to Amazing Stories, but he was most closely associated with Astounding Science-Fiction and its editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., who became a mentor to Asimov. “Nightfall” (1941), about a planet in a multiple-star system that only experiences darkness for one night every 2,049 years, brought him to the front rank of science-fiction writers and is regarded as one of the genre’s greatest short stories.

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

― Isaac Asimov