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Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov (January 2, 1920 - April 6, 1992) was a Russian-born American author and biochemist, a highly successful and extraordinarily prolific writer best known for his works of science fiction and for his science books for the layperson. He also wrote mysteries, many of which were collected in the Black Widowers books. He published about 500 volumes. He was a long-time member of Mensa.Asimov was born in Petrovichi[?], Russia, but his family emigrated to the United States when he was three years old. He grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., graduating from Columbia University in 1939 and taking a Ph.D. there in 1948. He then joined the faculty of Boston University, with which he remained associated thereafter, but in a non-teaching capacity. Isaac Asimov was a humanist and a rationalist. He didn't oppose genuine religious conviction in others but was against superstitious, unfounded beliefs. He was afraid of flying, only doing so twice in his entire life. Asimov was also a claustrophile, that is, he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces (the opposite of a claustrophobe). On most political issues Asimov was a progressive, and he was a staunch supporter of the United States Democratic Party. In a television interview in the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy at what he saw as an irrationalist tack taken by many progressive political activists from the late 1960s onwards. His defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island incident damaged his relations with some on the left. He issued many appeals for population control reflecting the perspective first articulated by Paul Ehrlich. In the closing years of his life Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York on the shrinking tax base caused by middle class flight to the suburbs. Asimov died on April 6, 1992, having been infected with HIV from tainted blood transfused during heart bypass surgery in 1983. That AIDS was the cause of his death was only revealed ten years later, in Janet Asimov's biography It's Been a Good Life.
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In 1942 he began his Foundation stories -- later collected in the Foundation Trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire[?] (1952), and Second Foundation[?] (1953) -- which recount the collapse and rebirth of a vast interstellar empire in a universe of the future. Taken together, they are his most famous work of science fiction. Many years later, he continued the series with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986) and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation[?] (1992).
His robot stories -- many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950) -- were begun at about the same time and promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws Of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. One such short story, The Bicentennial Man[?] was made into a movie starring Robin Williams.
He also wrote a spoof science article The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline in 1948, which he feared would affect his chances of obtaining his doctorate.
He also published two volumes of autobiography: In Memory Yet Green[?] (1979) and In Joy Still Felt[?] (1980). A third autobiography, I. Asimov: A Memoir, was published in April 1994. The epilogue was written by his second wife, Janet Asimov (née Jeppson), shortly after his death.
Asimov also wrote several essays on the social contentions of his day, including "Thinking About Thinking" and "Science: Knock Plastic" (1967).
How many times have we seen it?
Gerald R. Ford
distinguished guests:
In accordance with the Constitution, I come before you once again to report
only the first of such reports in our third century.html">century of independence, the
100 years from now a freely elected President will come before a freely
Government of the people.html">people.html">people.html">people.html">people, by the people, and for the people.
For my part I pray the third century we are beginning will bring to all
individual equality, opportunity, and justice, a greater abundance of
and the pursuit of happiness.
The state of the Union is a measurement of the many elements of which it is
interests, an intellectual union of common convictions, and a moral union
room for improvement, as always, but today we have a more perfect Union
celebration of the past; it became a joyous reaffirmation of all that it
and durability of our free institutions. I am proud to have been privileged
years when we proved, as I said in my first words upon assuming office,
and not of men. Here the people rule."
The people have spoken; they have chosen a new President and a new Congress
sincerely as I did President-elect Carter. In a few days it will be his
Tonight I will not infringe on that responsibility.html">responsibility, but rather wish him the
I can recall many orderly transitions of governmental responsibility--of
of the American system is that we do this so naturally and so normally.
Parade; no public demonstrations except for some of the dancers at the
functioning vigorously in the Congress and in the country; and our.
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