Isaac Asimov was one of the great SF writers of the twentieth century. Born in Russia in 1920, he came to the United States with his parents when he was three years old and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. “Marooned Off Vespa” was his first short story to be published; he was nineteen. Pebble in the Sky, his first novel, and the story collection I, Robot were published in 1950. In addition to the Foundation trilogy—Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation—his science fiction novels include The End of Eternity and The Gods Themselves, which won both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards. He also wrote David Starr, Space Ranger and other novels for young readers. A man of wide-ranging interests, Asimov taught biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine and wrote detective stories and nonfiction books on Shakespeare, the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, biochemistry, and the environment. He died in 1992.