Literature
H. G. Wells
Writer, father of modern science fiction
Born 1866 · Died 1946
Photo: George Charles Beresford · Public domain
«Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.»
H. G. Wells wrote The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man, inventing much of the vocabulary of science fiction in the process. He trained as a biologist, and his scientific education shows in every book.
Key achievements
- Wrote The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds
- Anticipated tanks, aerial bombing and the atomic bomb
- Nominated four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature
Universities
London, South Kensington
Studied biology at the Normal School of Science, now part of Imperial, under Thomas Henry Huxley in the 1880s.
Facts
- He studied under Thomas Henry Huxley, the biologist known as Darwin's bulldog for defending evolution in public debate.
- He described something very like an atomic bomb in a 1914 novel, using the phrase atomic bomb three decades before one existed.
- He founded and edited a student magazine at the college that still exists today.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.