Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead in 1917. During the Second World War he served as a radar instructor for the RAF, rising to the rank of flight-lieutenant. After the war, he entered King's college, London taking, in 1948, his Bsc in physics and mathematics with first class honours.One of the most respected of all science-fiction writers, he has won Kalinga Prize, the Aviation Space-Writers Prize and the Westinghouse Science Writing Prize. He also shared an Oscar nomination with Stanley Kubrick for the screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was based on his story, The Sentinel. He has lived in Sri Lanka since 1956.