About Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton was a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER. His most recent novel, Pirate Latitudes, published posthumously in November 2009, is a suspenseful adventure story set in the 17th century.
Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT. Crichton's 2004 bestseller, State of Fear, acknowledged the world was growing warmer, but challenged extreme anthropogenic warming scenarios. He predicted future warming at 0.8 degrees C. (His conclusions have been widely misstated.)
Crichton's interest in computer modelling went back forty years. His multiple-discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania, carried out on an IBM 7090 computer at Harvard, was published in the Papers of the Peabody Museum in 1966. His technical publications included a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma, in Metabolism, and an essay on medical obfuscation in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Crichton's first bestseller, The Andromeda Strain, was published while he was still a medical student. He later worked full time on film and writing. One of the most popular writers in the world, his books have been translated into thirty-six languages, and thirteen have been made into films.
He had a lifelong interest in computers. His feature film Westworld was the first to employ computer-generated special effects back in 1973. Crichton's pioneering use of computer programs for film production earned him a Technical Achievement Academy Award in 1995.
Crichton won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writer's Guild of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered ankylosaur was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini. He is survived by his wife Sherri, his daughter Taylor and his son, John Michael.
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Books
Fiction
Odds On (1966) (As John Lange)
Scratch One (1967) (As John Lange)
Easy Go (The Last Tomb) (1968) (As John Lange)
A Case of Need (1968) (As Jeffery Hudson – Re-released as Crichton in 1993)
Zero Cool (1969) (As John Lange)
The Andromeda Strain (1969)
The Venom Business (1969) (As John Lange)
Drug of Choice (1970) (As John Lange)
Dealing (1970) (As Michael Douglas – with brother Douglas Crichton)
Grave Descend (1970) (As John Lange)
Binary (1972) (As John Lange)
The Terminal Man (1972)
The Great Train Robbery (1975)
Eaters of the Dead (1976)
Congo (1980)
Sphere (1987)
Jurassic Park (1990)
Rising Sun (1992)
Disclosure (1994)
The Lost World (1995)
Airframe (1996)
Timeline (1999)
Prey (2002)
State of Fear (2004)
Next (2006)
Pirate Latitudes (2009) (Posthumous Publication)
Non-Fiction
Five Patients (1970)
Jasper Johns (1977)
Electronic Life (1983)
Travels (1988)
About Michael Crichton
