Gregory Benford life and biography

Gregory Benford is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is also a contributing editor of Reason magazine.

Physicist and astronomer Gregory Benford is the author of Timescape, winner of the Nebula and John W. Campbell Awards, as well as such such popular novels as The Sunborn, In The Oceans of Night, Tides of Light, and Great Sky River. In addition he contributed to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series with Foundation's Fear and co-authored Heart of the Comet with David Brin. His novel The Martian Race was called by Mars Society president Robert Zubrin "one of the finest novels about human exploration of the Red Planet ever written".

His numerous short stories have been collected in Matter's End and In Alien Flesh. Benford has also edited a number of anthologies, and is a science columnist for F&SF. He was Guest of Honor at the 1999 Worldcon in Australia and he has received the Australian Ditmar Award, as well as the 1990 United Nations Medal in Literature.

In his role as scientist Benford, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of California at San Diego, started out as a postdoctoral fellow and research fellow at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. In 1971 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Irvine, where he was appointed associate professor in 1979. With an emphasis on astrophysics and plasma turbulence, he has written over 150 research papers. And in 1995 he was awarded the Lord Prize for contributions to astrophysics and the general public's understanding of science.

In 1989 Benford served as host and scriptwriter for A Galactic Odyssey, an eight-part television series which described modern physics and astronomy from the perspective of the evolution of the galaxy. The program was produced by Japan National Broadcasting. Other television credits include Japan 2000, and Benford has also served as a consultant to the NHK Network and for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Benford is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and was Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. He served as an advisor to the Department of Energy, NASA and to the White House Council on Space Policy. He currently resides in Laguna Beach, California.

Author of books:

In the Ocean of Night (1977, novel)
Timescape (1980, novel)
Artifact (1985, novel)
In Alien Flesh (1986, collection)
Great Sky River (1987, novel)
Tides of Light (1989, novel)
Chiller (1993, novel, as Sterling Blake)
Matter's End (1995, collection)
Foundation's Fear (1997, novel)
Cosm (1998, novel)
Martian Race (1999, novel)
Beyond Infinity (2004, novel)

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