Yesterday was the burial of Arthur C. Clarke, famous scientist, science fiction writer, futurist and visionary. Born in 1917 in Britain, Clarke served in the Royal Air Force and later earned a degree in mathematics and physics (a fact that greatly pleases your humble narrator). He became a knight, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and received more awards than I can list here. In 1956 Arthur emigrated to Sri Lanka, where he lived until his death.
In his more than 100 books, Arthur C. Clarke popularized many great ideas like space elevators and gave a dream to an entire generation of future scientists. Clarke can be credited for inventing the concept of telecommunications satellites and geostationary orbits (which today are called Clarke Orbits). That is, the use of a network of satellites to get around the field of vision problem and allow wireless communication across to the other side of the globe.
Clarke is also famous for the movie 2001: Space Odyssey based on one of his short stories. The movie has become a popular icon in western culture, including the homicidal super-computer HAL 9000 (contrary to popular myth, the name of HAL is not derived from IBM but from Heuristic ALgorithm). Today, the Sir Arthur Clarke Awards (for notable contributions to space exploration) are shaped like the monolith in the movie and include a rendering of Clarke’s first diagram explaining how telecom satellites would work.
I like to think of Arthur C. Clarke as a modern day version of Jules Verne, only 100 years later. Both men had visions of the future ahead of their time. Jules Verne wrote about submarines, Clarke wrote about telecom satellites. Both ideas were deemed fiction in their time, and both are commonplace today.
The next major prediction of Arthur C. Clarke, which has not yet come to pass, is the space elevator, an idea first developed by the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and popularized by Clarke through his book Fountains of Paradise.
Arthur is also famous for his Rendezvous with Rama series, written in his later years. The Rama trilogy won him all the main awards in science fiction (Nebula Award 1973, Hugo Award 1974 and Jupiter Award 1974).
In 1988 he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, which confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, except when he was following his hobby of scuba diving. Clarke said diving was as close as he could get to the weightless feeling of space. “I’m perfectly operational underwater”, he once said.
Clarke continued writing until his death, 4 days ago, on March 19, 2008. Only a few days earlier he had reviewed the final manuscript of his latest work, The Last Theorem, which will be published later this year. Clarke lived to 90 years of age. He was buried yesterday, in the city of Colombo, Sri Lanka. His final wishes were: That someone find evidence of extraterrestrial life; that the world adopt clean energy sources; and that an end be found to the long civil war in Sri Lanka.
