Educated at Huish Grammar School in Taunton, Somerset, Clarke moved to London in 1936 and became a pensions auditor with the Board of Education. During the Second World War, Clarke served in the RAF as a radar specialist and also as a trainer/instructor, and eventually left the service in 1946 with the rank of flight lieutenant. He began publishing his stories as early as 1937, but it wasn't until 1946 that he sold his first story. Loophole appeared in the April issue of Astounding Science Fiction and Clarke embarked on a writing career. He published his first novel, Against the Fall of Night in 1948 as a novella which he subsequently expanded and re-published in 1953. It was this book that firmly established Clarke in the Science Fiction world. Clarke had an avid interest in space travel and advanced many ideas in the early 1950s that would later bear fruit in the space industry. In 1956, he moved to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to pursue his interest in scuba diving and remained there for the rest of his life. Clarke's most memorable work is undoubtedly 2001: A Space Odyssey loosely based on his 1948 short story The Sentinel. The work was filmed in 1968 under the direction of Stanley Kubrick and has achieved cult status. A number of sequels to the film were produced during the 1980s and 1990s and Clarke hosted a number of television programs during this time. Clarke was the recipient of the Hugo Award in 1956, The UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularisation of Science in 1961, a CBE in 1989, and was knighted in 2000. Among his huge output was The Sands of Mars (1951), The Nine Billion Names of God (1953), Reach for Tomorrow (1956), A Fall of Moondust (1961), Tales of Ten Worlds (1962), Rendezvous with Rama (1972), The Wind From the Sun (1972), Imperial Earth (1976), The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Astounding Days (1989), The Hammer of God (1993) and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997).