I’ve been slow on posting this, but here goes…

Michael Crichton died of cancer last week, aged 66. No further details of his illness have been released.

Most good science geeks will have read at least one of his novels in their time, or at least seen one of his many movies or TV shows. Crichton was a prolific writer and TV/movie producer – often focusing on popularising science and raising awareness of the current hot topics in research. It seems kind of fitting that in his last week, details of the successful cloning of dead mice were published – the basic premise of his mega-blockbuster Jurassic Park from the nineties (just replace the mice with Tyrannosaurus rex).

It’s fair to say that without his ideas and ludicrous action sequences, the general public may still be unaware of some of the steps science is taking into the future.

Anyway, you can find out all you want about him on wikipedia or his website, so there’s no point regurgitating it here. You might, however, like this video interview with Charlie Rose, filmed with the release of genetic ‘thriller’ ‘Next‘. He discusses global warming, corporate ownership of disease and why ‘Next’ is terrible to read (apparently it’s because he was ‘picking up stories like the genome picks up junk DNA’).

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