Michael Crichton, aged 66, died in Los Angeles on Tuesday. According to the release issued by his public relations firm, the medical doctor passionate about science and science fiction died “after a courageous and private battle against cancer”.

Crichton was known to the public as the creator of popular long-running show “ER” and for writing best-sellers such as “Jurassic Park”, “The Andromeda Strain”, “Sphere” and “Rising Sun”.

Michael Crichton was born in 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised by his parents in Long Island, New York. He attended Harvard College, the oldest section of the prestigious Ivy League Harvard University. He graduated in 1964 summa cum laude. He was a Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow between 1964 and 1965, and also a Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at the Cambridge University in the United Kingdom in 1965. In 1969, he graduated from the Harvard Medical School with an M.D. From 1969 to 1970, he attended post-doctoral studies at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He was also a Visiting Writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1988.

He wrote a couple of novels while he was in medical school. “A Case of Need”, written under the pen name Jeffery Hudson, won him a “Best Novel” Edgar Award in 1969. He co-authored a book, “Dealing”, with his younger brother Douglas. The two brothers signed the book with a shared pseudonym, “Michael Douglas”.

Crichton shared some of his life stories with the public. One of the most interesting ones was about how he tested a professor he thought was giving him low grades without reason. He plagiarized one of George Orwell’s works, handed it in as his own paper and received a “B-“.

His personal life was far from monotonous, as Crichton was married five times, and divorced his first four wives. He had one child, a daughter named Taylor Anne, with his fourth wife, Anne-Marie Martin. His current wife was Sherri Alexander.

His most famous work is, without a doubt, the science fiction novel “Jurassic Park”. In regards to the moral of the story, it resembles the lesson learned by Dr. Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and it is based in the chaos theory. Steven Spielberg took it one step further and directed one of history’s most viewed movies “Jurassic Park”.

Crichton’s sequel, “The Lost World”, was also translated to the big screen by Spielberg. This masterpiece offered viewers and readers much more than just entertainment value – “Jurassic Park” is what is known as a “cautionary tale”, warning the population about the dangers of playing God and meddling with biology and genetics without considering the consequences of such actions.

Hit TV show “ER”, the show that made George Clooney who he is today and which laid the foundations of medical dramas such as “Scrubs”, “Grey’s Anatomy” or the sarcasm-filled “House: M.D.”, was also co-created with Steven Spielberg. His massive contribution earned him an Emmy award, just one of the numerous awards Crichton got during his life.