Jules Verne

Born: 8 February 1828 Birthplace: Nantes, France Died: 24 March 1905 Best Known As: Author of Around the World in Eighty Days Jules Verne was a French novelist whose many popular novels include the classics A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). While studying law, Verne wrote plays and librettos, but soon turned to writing novels full-time. He wrote dozens of books in his career and became the world-famous and wealthy author of adventures that are still in print today, including In Search of the Castaways (1868), The Mysterious Island (1874) and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870). Many of Verne's works became familiar to movie audiences, thanks to movie versions produced by Walt Disney's studios. Much like novelist H. G. Wells, Verne is considered a founding father of science fiction, thanks to his remarkably prophetic details of scientific inventions.