Name: NOURSE, Alan Edward Aged: 63
Born: August 11, 1928 Where: Des Moines, Iowa
Died: July 19, 1992 Where: Thorp, Washington
Interred: _ _ _
Married: Ann Jane Morton When: June 11, 1952
Awarded: _ _ _

Nourse was raised in Des Moines until age 15 when his father moved to New York City. Alan went to school at Forest Hills High and began pre-med studies at Rutgers. A Navy military hitch in 1946-48 served in the Hospital Corp was to Nourse's liking. So when that ended, Alan returned to school and received a BS from Rutgers University in 1951, with an MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. Dr. Nourse spent most of his medical career in Washington state.

Nourse wrote widely for the mainstream magazines and often had regular columns there, sometimes medical, sometimes not. He was contributing editor for Good Housekeeping for 16 years. In SF, Nourse was the author of The Bladerunner. Time requirements forced him into short form fiction and three large collections appeared, Tiger by the Tail, 1961; The Counterfeit Man, 1963; and Rx For Tomorrow, 1971. Nourse's work appeared regularly in Argosy, Playboy, Saturday Evening Post, Astounding SF, & Boy's Life.

Nourse also wrote a best-seller novel, Intern, as Doctor X, and based on his internship with the Virginia Mason medical group in Seattle; and Alan told the story of physics in Universe, Earth and Atom, 1969. Nourse also found time to do a vocational series of So You Want to be a... books that dealt with professions like physicist, doctor, scientist, etc.

Given the time demands on a practicing MD, Alan E Nourse was exceptionally prolific and productive. Part of the reason Alan was not well known in SF was because of his name: Andre Norton used Andrew North as a pen name and Alan Nourse was assumed by many for years to be another pen name of Andre Norton, especially since both often appeared in Ace doublebacks. Regrettable mistake. Alan was also a generous man, helping more than a few SF writers who were down on their luck financially.

PEN NAMES: Al Edwards, Doctor X

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.

OBITUARY: The Ellensburg Daily Record, July 21, 1992, and a relative book review.

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