Michael Crichton bio
After graduating from the Harvard Medical School, Michael Crichton embarked on a career as a writer and filmmaker. Called “the father of the techno-thriller,” his novels include The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Jurassic Park , and State of Fear. He has also written four books of non-fiction, including Five Patients, Travels, and Jasper Johns.He has sold more than 150 million books, and his books have been translated into thirty-six languages and thirteen have been made into films. He is also the creator of the television series ER. He is the only person to have had, at the same time, the number one book, the number one movie, and the number one TV show in the United States.
Always interested in computers, Crichton ran a software company, FilmTrack, which developed computer programs for motion picture production in the 1980s; for this pioneering work he won an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Technical Achievement Award in 1995. His film Westworld was the first feature film to employ computer-generated special effects, back in 1973.
Crichton has won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writer’s Guild of America award for ER. In 2002, a newly-discovered anklylosaur was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini. Crichton was named one of the “Fifty Most Beautiful People” by People magazine in 1992, but, he observes, never again. He is married and lives in Los Angeles.
CRICHTON, (John) Michael. American. Born in Chicago, Illinois, October 23, 1942. Educated at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, A.B. (summa cum laude) 1964 (Phi Beta Kappa). Henry Russell Shaw Travelling Fellow, 1964-65. Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University, England, 1965. Graduated Harvard Medical School, M.D. 1969; post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla, California 1969-1970. Visiting Writer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988.
Awards: Recipient of Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award, 1968 (”A Case of Need”, written under pseudonym Jeffery Hudson); and 1980 (”The Great Train Robbery”). Association of American Medical Writers Award, 1970 (”Five Patients”); Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Technical Achievement Award, 1995 (”for pioneering computerized motion picture budgeting and scheduling”); George Foster Peabody Award (for “ER”); Writer’s Guild of America Award, Best Long Form Television Script of 1995 (for “ER”) Emmy, Best Dramatic Series, 1996 (for “ER”). Ankylosaur named Crichtonsaurus bohlini, 2002.
Associations: Member of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Author’s Guild, Writers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America, P.E.N. America Center, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Phi Beta Kappa. Board of Directors, International Design Conference at Aspen, 1985-91; Board of Trustees, Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, La Jolla, 1986-91. Board of Overseers, Harvard University, 1990-96. Author’s Guild Council, 1995-
References: Contemporary Authors, 1971-; Who’s Who in America, 1974-; Current Biography, April 1976; Film Encyclopedia, 1979-; International Motion Picture Almanac, 1996; International Television & Video Almanac, 1996.
