Word: asimov
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...between the scientific and nonscientific communities -the "two cultures," as British Physicist and Author C. P. Snow calls them -politicians, educators, TV producers and scientists themselves have been trying to bridge it. No emissary to the nonscientific world has been more successful than a highly articulate biochemist named Isaac Asimov...
Driven by a compulsion to make science understandable to the intelligent layman, Asimov has written 96 books and hundreds of magazine articles dealing with nearly every scientific specialty, from The Genetic Code to The Neutrino. Stories such as I, Robot and The Martian Way have placed him in the top rank of U.S. science-fiction writers. And a recent magazine poll showed that a way-out Asimov trilogy written in the 1950s about the universe of the future is still rated first in popularity among science-fiction fans. Asimov has also been published in periodicals ranging from Playboy to Atomic...
Picking Up Bio. Asimov's scientific credentials are impeccable. After earning his masters degree in chemistry at Columbia University, he worked as a research chemist for the Navy during World War II, then returned to Columbia to receive his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1948. His thesis-which was definitely not written for the layman-was entitled "The Kinetics of the Reaction Inactivation of Tyroserose During Its Catalyzing of the Aerobic Oxidation of Catechol." Says Asimov: "It was the definitive work...
After earning his degree, Asimov did research on the nucleic acids, then was invited to teach biochemistry at Boston University Medical School. "I had never had a course in biochemistry in my life," he recalls, "but I was a pretty good chemist and figured that the bio wouldn't be too difficult to pick up." His immodesty was more than justified. Before long, he had co-authored Biochemistry and Human Metabolism, a book that is still a well-regarded text on the subject...
...enjoyment of your Mariner cover story [July 23] was somewhat curtailed by the implication that "science fictioneers" are not authors of serious literary works. Men like A. E. Van Vogt, Poul Anderson and Isaac Asimov are respected as writers of fact as well as fiction. The thought that these men picture life on Mars as "little green men with floppy antennae sprouting out of little green heads" is at once ridiculous and laughable...