A graduate of UCLA, Mark Thek earned a master's in physics before launching a career as a physicist and engineer. Since 1995, he has served as president of Esterline Power Systems in Los Angeles. Outside of his professional pursuits, Mark Thek spends his free time reading, counting the works of Isaac Asimov among his favorites.
The author of hundreds of books, Isaac Asimov was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction writers of all time. Born in Russia in 1920, Asimov and his family immigrated to the United States when he was 3 years old. Asimov enjoyed writing from an early age, and his first story was published in 1939. His first success came two years later with the publication of Nightfall, which is still regarded by some as the best science fiction short story ever written.
Asimov studied chemistry at Columbia University while enjoying early success as a writer. In the early '40s, he worked as a chemist for a few years before returning to school and earning a PhD in 1948. Asimov published his first novel, Pebble in the Sky, in 1950, and his highly regarded Foundation series from 1951-53. Though he accepted an associate professorship at Boston University in 1995, he gave up teaching in 1958 to pursue writing full time.
In addition to his Foundation trilogy, some of Asimov's most well-known fictional works include I, Robot; The Stars, Like Dust; Fantastic Voyage; and The Robots of Dawn. Prior to his death in 1992, he also wrote many nonfiction works in a variety of areas, including mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, physics, history, and literature.
