Clarke, Arthur C.

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was a British science writer and author of science fiction books born in Minehead, Somerset. After leaving school in 1936 he moved to London were he joined the Board of Education as an auditor. He was a member of the British Interplanetary Society; between 1947 and 1950 and in 1953 he was the Society's president. He served as an RAF radar specialist during the war, and after the war he read physics and mathematics at King's College, London, graduating in 1948. In 1956, he moved to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, where he lived until his death. His marriage to an American woman, Marilyn Mayfield, in 1953 only lasted a few months.