robert b finegold md is a recently retired physician, a radiologist by specialty, who lives in Maine. His experience includes academic as well as clinical radiology, student education, and chairing both state and national committees of the American College of Radiology.

 

But before all that, he was a grade school science nerd about the time the term was coined. This is just a coincidence. His photograph does not appear next to the word in Webster's dictionary despite what his elder brother claimed (Bob knows -- he checked). From bugs to stars, young bob devoured science books . . . and then discovered Asimov, Clarke, and Silverberg, and subsequently Bradbury, Tolkien, Dunsany, and Smith. He's been traveling in far places ever since.

 

As an undergraduate, he majored in English (again evoking chortles from his brother), with focus on Creative Writing and British Literature. He collected his first personal rejections from Asimov's and Fantasy & Science Fiction back then before putting down his pen and taking up a stethoscope (a career in medicine being his back-up plan).

 

And there that pen passed out of knowledge and legend, to paraphrase the good Professor Tolkien.