Jules Verne
Jules Verne, (1828-1905). French novelist. Verne studied law in Paris before turning to literature. Although he began by writing plays, his scientific interests soon inspired the science-fiction novels for which he is now remembered, notably Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870). A number of the devices invented by Verne for his fiction, such as the submarine and television, have since become fact. On his return to Paris after the Franco-Prussian War, he published the immensely popular Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). Verne was made an officer of the Legion d’honneur in 1892.