Biography of Isaac Asimov

Traveller of time and space

2 January 1920 6 April 1992 Isaac Asimov was born on January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi, near Smolensk, in the Soviet Union. In 1923 the family moved to the States, in New York, where Isaac will accomplish their studies. The father buys in 1926 a candy store in Brooklyn, and here, as well as in other stores acquired later, little Isaac spends most of her childhood. The extraordinary qualities of the child prodigy emerge immediately. Just think, for example, that only five years learn to read alone (almost like Leopards) and that from then on will not stop more than read books and study. Legendary, in this sense, are his assiduous presence at national libraries, its only source of "livelihood" intellectual in the early years of his life and for a long time yet, then. A passion for science fiction contagions in 1929 when in his father's shop (in those days the candy stores were selling not only American sweets, but also newspapers and magazines) discovers the journals of "Science Fiction", of which he quickly became an avid reader. The promises are widely held and the father can only be proud of a son who first graduated in chemistry at Columbia University in New York (Bachelor of Science Degree, 1939) and then, not content, he graduated in philosophy (m.a., 1941). After the u.s. entry into the war, Isaac Asimov works as a chemist at the U.S. Navy Yard in Philadelphia. Between 1949 and 1958 is a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. Later, thanks to the success of his works, he abandoned the academic activities and become a writer full-time, giving life to his vast production, fruit of his vein that define prolific would be really reductive. In fact Isaac Asimov is unanimously considered one of the major fiction writers of all time. Its success is due to the happy marriage between literary invention and scientific truth that manages to make his books plausible and great together, real mirrors of a possible future. In the literary environment is his satirical vein and ironic end, which can be seen even in some of his works, especially in prefaces. Known in Italy as in the rest of the planet, are among the books by Asimov, those in the loop on future of Robotics (I, Robot; The second book of the Robot) and the cycle of "Foundation" (translated with the titles of "Chronicles of the Galaxy", "the collapse of the Galaxy" and "the other side of the spiral"). Isaac Asimov died on April 6, 1992 due to complications in the cardiovascular system, throwing in dismay thousands of fans worldwide. In 2002, his second wife, Janet Jeppson Asimov reveals that death had been caused by Aids, the disease that had contracted in 1983 during a blood transfusion. Wouldn't be the writer to want to keep it a secret, the more likely the hospital, to avoid a scandal.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.