Isaac Asimov was a writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke.
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between Oct. 4, 1919, and Jan. 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian Jewish millers. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the
myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other kids in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger sibs: a sister, Marcia (1922–2011) and a brother, Stanley (1929–95), who was VP of Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the U.S. via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on Feb. 3, 1923. His parents spoke Yiddish and English to him; he never learned Russian, his parents using it as a secret language "when they wanted to discuss something
privately that my big ears were not to hear". Growing up in Brooklyn, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of 5 (& later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the 2nd grade). His mother got him into 1st grade a year early
by claiming he was born on Sept. 7, 1919. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, which Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love
of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp sci-fi mags) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading sci-fi at age 9, at the time that the genre was becoming more
science-centered. Asimov was also a frequent patron of the Brooklyn Public Library during his formative years.
In between earning two degrees, Asimov spent 3 years during WWII working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed
from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll.
He began work as a professor in 1949 with a $5,000 salary (equivalent to $57,000 in 2021), maintaining this position for several years. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing
research, confining his university role to lecturing students.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile defense project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be
impaired should he receive classified info, but submitted a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how govt-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917–1990), on a blind date on Feb. 14, 1942, and married her on July 26. They had 2 kids, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this
time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and sci-fi writer, and married her in 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the 3rd volume of his autobio, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a NYC Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing
trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly hired to give talks about science. He was a frequent participant at sci-fi conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with
postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (5' 9"), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle, but learned to drive a car after he
moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his
friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and A.I. expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member & VP of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly;
he described some members of that org as "brain-proud & aggressive about their IQs".
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In Dec. 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Med Ctr, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his
family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years later, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobio,
It's Been a Good Life.
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science.
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population
control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a
perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power, even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident, damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would
prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the
Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the
middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of
the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
"It's going to destroy it all ... if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you
have to bang at the door, aren't you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the
value of life not only declines, but it disappears."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov
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