Rated
Mar 19 2008
•
1 review
•
news
• google.com
From the page: "Arthur C. Clarke
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) â€" Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who co-wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey" and won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday, an aide said. He was 90.
Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s, died in his adopted home of Sri Lanka after breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.
Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.
He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.
Born in Minehead, England, he was the son of a farmer. He worked as a clerk in Her Majesty's Exchequer and Audit Department in London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society and wrote his first short stories and scientific articles on space travel.
After World War II, Clarke received a bachelor of science degree in physics and mathematics from King's College in London. In the wartime Royal Air Force, he was in charge of a new radar blind-landing system. In a 1945 RAF memo, he wrote about the possibility of using satellites to revolutionize communications â€" an idea whose time had decidedly not come."
