Author Biography and Bibliography

Author Biography

Gregory Benford is a working scientist who has written some 23 critically-acclaimed novels. He has received two Nebula Awards, the first for If the Stars are Gods (1977), and the second in 1981 for his best known work, Timescape, a novel that sold over a million copies and also won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Australian Ditmar Award, and the British Science Fiction Award. In 1992, Dr. Benford received the United Nations Medal in Literature. He has TV and film experience, and several of his novels are under development for feature films.

He is also a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, where he has taught since 1971. He specializes in astrophysics and plasma physics theory and was presented with the Lord Prize in 1995 for achievements in the sciences. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Phi Beta Kappa. Over the years, he has been an advisor to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the United Sates Department of Energy, and the White House Council on Space Policy, and has served as a visiting fellow at Cambridge University. Currently he holds research grants from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

He is the author of 140 research papers in his field, and has also published in biology and climate change. His first book-length work of nonfiction, Deep Time (1999), examines his work in long duration messages from a broad humanistic and scientific perspective.

He speaks Russian and German, and brings to his own writings his considerable international experience, which includes eight years' residence in Germany, Italy and Japan.





Photograph by Elisabeth Malartre.