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, movie and 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 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.
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