It is named after physicist Frank Benford, who stated it in 1938,

Gregory Benford ( born January 30, 1941 in Mobile, Alabama ) is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.

In the officially licensed Foundation sequels Foundation's Fear, Foundation and Chaos and Foundation's Triumph ( by Gregory Benford, Greg Bear and David Brin respectively ) the future Galactic Empire is seen to be controlled by a conspiracy of humaniform robots who follow the Zeroth Law and led by R. Daneel Olivaw.

Benford's law of controversy, as expressed by science-fiction author Gregory Benford in 1980, states: Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real ( true ) information available.

Science fiction author and physicist Gregory Benford has declared that: " SF is perhaps the defining genre of the twentieth century, although its conquering armies are still camped outside the Rome of the literary citadels.

A variation, developed by brothers James Benford and Gregory Benford, is to use thermal desorption of propellant trapped in the material of a very large microwave-sail.

As a science fiction author, Benford is perhaps best known for the Galactic Center Saga novels, beginning with In the Ocean of Night ( 1977 ).

Benford has said he is an atheist, though his views are not settled.

Benford tends to write hard science fiction which incorporates the research he is doing as a practical scientist.

If the rest mass is imaginary this implies that the denominator is imaginary since the total energy is an observable and thus must be real ; therefore the quantity under the square root must be negative, which can only happen if v is greater than c. As noted by Gregory Benford et al., among others, special relativity implies that tachyons, if they existed, could be used to communicate backwards in time ( see Tachyonic antitelephone article ).

He is perhaps best known for his portrayals of William Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love, Sir Robert Dudley in Elizabeth, Commisar Danilov in Enemy at the Gates, Martin Luther in Luther, Merlin in Camelot, and his portrayal of Mark Benford in the 2009 TV series FlashForward.

He is also the central character of the Second Foundation Trilogy written after Asimov's death ( Foundation's Fear by Gregory Benford, Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear, and Foundation's Triumph by David Brin ), which are set after Asimov's two prequels.

Foundation's Fear ( 1997 ) is a science fiction novel by Gregory Benford, set in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe.

The Galactic Center Saga is a series of books by author Gregory Benford detailing a galactic war between mechanical and biological life.

Timescape is a 1980 novel by science fiction writer Gregory Benford ( with unbilled co-author Hilary Foister ).

Gregory Benford wrote a sequel titled Beyond the Fall of Night, with Clarke's approval, which follows the original novel but not the revised version, and it is generally printed with the original as a single volume.

Eater is a hard science fiction novel written by UC-Irvine physics professor Gregory Benford.

Heart of the Comet is a novel by David Brin and Gregory Benford about human space travel to Comet Halley published in 1986.

An aging Robert Zubrin also appears as a background character in The Martian Race ( 1999 ) by Gregory Benford, a science fiction novel depicting early human explorers on Mars in the very near future.

Benford has also served as an editor of numerous alternate history anthologies as well as collections of Hugo Award winners.

Theodore L. Thomas, Gregory Benford and Pat Murphy have also contributed science columns.

Benford serves on the board of directors and the steering committee of the Mars Society.

Geoffrey A. Landis used concepts from The Case for Mars in his novel Mars Crossing ( Tor, 2000 ), and Gregory Benford used the basic structure of Mars Direct in The Martian Race ( 1999 ).

Gregory Benford and David Brin's Heart of the Comet features a comet with a conventional carbon-and-water-based ecosystem that becomes active near the perihelion when the Sun warms it.

Gregory Benford had a form of plasma-based life exist in the accretion disk of a primordial black hole in his novel Eater.

* 1948 – Frank Benford, American electrical engineer and physicist ( b. 1883 )

# A Darker Geometry ( 1996, with Mark O. Martin and Gregory Benford )

Some hard SF authors have distinguished themselves as working scientists, including Gregory Benford, Geoffrey A. Landis and David Brin, while mathematician authors include Rudy Rucker and Vernor Vinge.

By then, a neo-Campbellian revival of hard science fiction after 1982 at the hands of David Brin, Gregory Benford, Greg Bear and others had emerged.

Notable writing judges have included: Algis Budrys, Gregory Benford, Kevin J. Anderson, Orson Scott Card, Jack Williamson, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Brian Herbert, K. D. Wentworth, Tim Powers, Robert J. Sawyer, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle, Andre Norton, Larry Niven, and Anne McCaffrey.

Benford received a Bachelor of Science in physics in 1963 from University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma, followed by a Master of Science from the University of California, San Diego in 1965, and a doctorate there in 1967.

Benford modeled characters in several of his novels after her, most prominently the heroine of Artifact.

Benford has an identical twin brother, Jim Benford, with whom he has collaborated on science fiction stories.

The true artist is like one of those scientists who, from a single bone can reconstruct an animal's entire body.

The place is inhabited by several hundred warlike women who are anachronisms of the Twentieth Century -- stone age amazons who live in an all-female, matriarchal society which is self-sufficient ''.

He speaks your language too, for he is the grandson of a chieftain on Taui who made much magic and was strong and cunning.

There was a measure of protection in its concrete walls and ceiling, but the engineers who hastily installed it were well aware that concrete is not much better than prayer, if as efficacious, when a direct hit comes along.

This is puzzling to an outsider conscious of the classic tradition of liberalism, because it is clear that these Democrats who are left-of-center are at opposite poles from the liberal Jefferson, who held that the best government was the least government.

In fact it has caused us to give serious thought to moving our residence south, because it is not easy for the most objective Southerner to sit calmly by when his host is telling a roomful of people that the only way to deal with Southerners who oppose integration is to send in troops and shoot the bastards down.

but there is a leavening of liberalism among college graduates throughout the South, especially among those who studied in the North.

but for this discussion the most important division is between those who have been reconstructed and those who haven't.

My definition of this much abused adjective is that a reconstructed rebel is one who is glad that the North won the War.

To him, law is the command of the sovereign ( the English monarch ) who personifies the power of the nation, while sovereignty is the power to make law -- i.e., to prevail over internal groups and to be free from the commands of other sovereigns in other nations.

Accidental war is so sensitive a subject that most of the people who could become directly involved in one are told just enough so they can perform their portions of incredibly complex tasks.

It is the gait of the human who must run to live: arms dangling, legs barely swinging over the ground, head hung down and only occasionally swinging up to see the target, a loose motion that is just short of stumbling and yet is wonderfully graceful.