Michael Crichton, who died in Los Angeles on November 4, 2008,
was a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of
Jurassic Park and the creator of ER. His most
recent novel, Next, about genetics and law, was published
in December 2006.
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 modeling 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 Award, a Peabody Award, and a Writers Guild
of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered
ankylosaur was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini. He had a
daughter, Taylor, and lived in Los Angeles. Crichton remarried in
2005.