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Biographie d'Arthur-C Clarke

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Kt., CBE, was born on December 16, 1917, in Minehead, Somerset, England, to Charles W. Clarke, a farmer and lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, and Nora Mary (Willis) Wright. He was married to Marilyn Mayfield in 1953 and divorced in 1964. A resident of Colombo, Sri Lanka, since 1956, Sir Arthur received his CBE in 1989 and his knighthood (for services to literature) in 1998. In 1975, he was the first noncitizen to receive Resident Guest status in Sri Lanka, where he is chancellor of the University of Moratuwa (l979-). He is also chancellor of the International Space University (l989-). The author of over eighty books and five hundred articles and short stories, Sir Arthur was educated at Huish Grammar School in Taunton (1927-36), and King's College, London, 1946-48 (B.Sc., first class, physics and mathematics). Before becoming a full-time writer, he was an auditor in H.M. Exchequer and Audit Department (1936-41) and served in the Royal Air Force (l941-46) as an instructor at the No. 9 Radio School and then flight lieutenant with MIT Radlab's ground-controlled approach radar. He originated the concept of the geosynchronous communications satellite, published in Wireless World in 1945, and the lunar mass-driver (journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1950). He was assistant editor of Physics Abstracts for the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1949-50, and chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, 1947-50 and 1953. From 1955 to 1965, Sir Arthur was involved in underwater exploration in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka. From 1964 to 1968, Sir Arthur wrote, with film director Stanley Kubrick, the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, on which the film was based. This was followed by the book and film 2010 (1982), and the books 2061 (1988) and 3001 (1997). Other famous science fiction novels include Against the Fall of Night (1953), The Sands of Mars (1951), Childhood's End (l953), the four-part Rama series (l972-93), and The Hammer of God (l993), which Steven Spielberg optioned for the film Deep Impact. In 1952, his nonfiction work The Exploration of Space was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Arthur C. Clarke covered United States space missions and the Apollo Moon landings for CBS from 1957 to 1970. He wrote and hosted the television series Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World, The World of Strange Powers, and Mysterious Universe in the 1980s and 1990s. He is an honorary vice president of the H. G. Wells Society, the honorary chairman of the Society of Satellite Professionals, president of the British Science Fiction Association, a life member of the British Science Writers, a board member of the National Space Society, the Planetary Society, and the Buckminster Fuller Institute, and a trustee of the Spaceguard Foundation, as well as a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Awards and honors include honorary fellows of the British Interplanetary Society, the American Astronautical Association, the International Academy of Astronautics, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.; the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Engineering Award, 1981; the IEE Centennial Medal, 1984; the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award, 1990; International Science Policy Foundation Medal, 1992; Nobel Peace Prize nomination, 1994; NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, 1995; Unesco Kalinga Prize, 1961; the von Karman Award, International Academy of Astronautics, Beijing, 1996; Oscar nomination, with Stanley Kubrick, for 2001 screenplay, 1969; Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America, 1986; and the Special Achievement Award, Space Explorers Association, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 1989.