Sir Arthur C. Clarke:

The prophetic writer

Compiled by Ishara Mudugamuwa

Arthur Charles Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset in the United Kingdom on 16 December 1917.He studied at Huish's Grammar school. He was unable to afford a university education and got a job as an auditor in the pensions section of the Board of Education.

During the second World War, he served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in the early warning radar defence system which contributed to the RAF's success during the Battle of Britain.

After the war, he earned, a first class degree in mathematics and physics at King's College, London. In the postwar years, Clarke became involved with the British Interplanetary Society(BIS) and served for a while as its chairman.

His most important contribution may have been the idea that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays. Clarke was the first in the world to propose this concept, doing so in a paper privately circulated among the core technical members of the BIS in 1945.

In 1953, Clarke married 22 year old American Marilya Mayfield. That marriage wasn't successful. Clarke has lived in Sri Lanka since 1956. First he resided in Galle and then he moved over to Colombo. He holds citizenship of both Sri Lanka and the UK.

Clarke showed his talent as a science fiction author, inventor and futurist. In the early 1970s he signed a three-book publishing deal, a record for a science-fiction writer of the time. "The Rendezvous With Rama" was one of them.

"Expedition to Earth", "Reach for tomorrow", "Tales from the White Heart and the Wind from the Son", are some of his short stories. Clarke became very famous for his novel A Space Odyssey.

In 1988 he was diagnosed with post polio syndrome and since then has been dependent on a wheel chair most of the time .Clarke was the first chancellor of the International Space University and was also the Chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka from 1979 to 2002.

Clarke's three laws are "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right.

When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong"," The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into impossible" and "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Arthur C. Clarke is the one who has spent his entire life with science.