Michael Crichton American author Michael Crichton was born as John Michael Crichton on October 23, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised in Roslyn, Long Island. After Crichton obtained his M.D. at Harvard Medical School in 1969, he did a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. While a med student at Harvard, Crichton wrote under the pen names Jeffery Hudson and John Lange. Reportedly, the latter points to Crichton’s impressive six foot nine inch stature, as Lange means "tall one" in German, Danish, and Dutch.
By his late twenties, Crichton was already an award-winning novelist. His novel A Case of Need (credited as Jeffery Hudson) was recognized with the 1969 Edgar Award for Best Novel. Crichton would go on to write several novels which were turned into blockbuster films, including: Jurassic Park in 1993, starring Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern; Congo in 1995; and Disclosure in 1994, starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Crichton has also written and directed films such as Twister in 1996, starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton; and even served as the the creator, writer, and executive producer for the hit hospital series, ER. By the mid 90s, Crichton had mastered all forms of media. In December of 1994, he had the #1 movie and book with Disclosure, and the #1 TV show with ER. In the non-fiction genre, Crichton has written the semi-autobiographical Travels, and is the author of Electronic Life, which teaches BASIC programming. He also lectures on the topics of global warming, the media, radical environmentalism, and DDT banning.
In 1992, Crichton was named one of People magazine’s Fifty Most Beautiful People. He also has the unique distinction of having a dinosaur named after him, Crichtonsaurus bohlini, in honor of Jurassic Park. In 1999, Crichton and David Smith partnered to form Timeline Computer Entertainment, which published the computer game, Timeline. It was not Crichton’s first foray into computer game creation – in 1984, his game, Amazon, was released to run on Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and DOS. Unlike Timeline, Amazon was a commercial success and considered groundbreaking for its time. In 2004, Crichton released another cautionary tale of threats facing mankind. State of Fear addresses the hot topic of global warming with a twist. The real threat presented in the book is eco-terrorism, rather than climate change itself. Crichton has been married and divorced four times. He is currently married to Sherri Alexander, and has one child, a daughter named Taylor, from his previous marriage to Anne-Marie Martin, a fellow author with whom Crichton co-wrote Twister. YUDDY |
