Isaac Asimov was a Russian-American biochemist and science fiction author. He was born in Petrovichi, Russia in 1920, and migrated to the United States with his family at age three. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York and attended Columbia University. During World War II, immediately after his graduation from Columbia, he worked at the Naval Aviation Experimental Station in Philadelphia. After the war ended in 1945, he completed his doctorate in chemistry, again at Columbia, and then joined the faculty of Boston University.
Asimov first began publishing science fiction short stories in 1939. In particular, he published many stories in a magazine called Astounding Science-Fiction, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. One of his most famous stories, "Nightfall" (1941), earned him a highly regarded position in the science fiction genre. In 1940, he began writing stories about robots, which would become part of a series on the topic. He was one of the first science fiction writers to develop a code of ethics for his robots, rather than casting them as evil or immoral agents.
In later decades, Asimov published science fiction novels, series for children, and further short stories. In the late 1950s, however, he began to write more nonfiction, primarily on science topics for the public. Asimov was extremely prolific and was deeply influential in making ideas about technological advancement and scientific progress accessible to the public.