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Asimov was born around January 2, 1920 (his date of birth for official purposes -- the precise date is not certain) in PetrovichiPetrovichi is a Russian town near Smolensk. About 400 km. southwest of Moscow and some 16 km east of the border between Belarus and Russia. Latitude: 53. 58 N Longitude: 32. 10 E (from open-site. org) Birthplace of Isaac Asimov., near SmolenskSmolensk is a city in western Russia, located on the Dniepr river at 54. 79° North, 32. 05° East ( The World Gazetteer), administrative center of Smolensk Oblast. Its population in 2003 is 351,100. The name of the city is derived from the name of Smolnya, Russia, to Anna Rachel and Judah Asimov, a JewThe word Jew is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to either a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or a member of the Jewish culture or ethnicity. This article discusses the term as describing an ethnic group; for aish family. They emigrated to the United States when he was three years old. He taught himself to read at the age of 5. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York. His parents owned a candy store and everyone in the family was expected to work in it. He saw science fiction magazines in the store and began reading them. In his late teens, he began to write his own stories and soon was selling them to pulp magazines.
He graduated from Columbia University in 1939 and took a Ph.D. in chemistry there in 1948. He then joined the faculty of Boston University, with which he remained associated thereafter, but in a non-teaching capacity. The university ceased to pay him a salary in 1958, by which time his income from writing already exceeded his income from his academic duties. (Asimov remained on the faculty as an associate professor, in 1979 promoted to full professor, and his personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at Boston University's Mugar Memorial Library , where they consume 464 boxes on 232 feet of shelf space.)
He married Gertrude Blugerman on July 26, 1942, with whom he had two children, David (b. 1951) and Robyn (b. 1955). After an extended separation, they were divorced in 1973, and Asimov married Janet O. Jeppson later that year.
Asimov died on April 6, 1992, having contracted HIV from an infected blood transfusion during heart bypass surgery in 1983. He was survived by his second wife, Janet, and his children from his first marriage. That AIDS was the cause of his death was only revealed ten years later, in Janet Asimov's biography It's Been a Good Life.