Artist of science [Obituary]

The runaway success of techno-thriller author Michael Crichton, who has died aged 66, made him one of the world\´s leading engineering popularisers. The medical doctor turned author, director and screenwriter once described his creative process as "an assembly line. Some of the ideas on the line are just collections of unassembled parts, some of them are the chassis, a few have windshields but no engine. A lot of them will never make it to the end of the line." His novels combined basic prose and characterisation with intricate, urgent plotlines, invariably centred on new technological developments running amok, be it alien microorganisms, runaway nanorobots or - most lucratively - cloned dinosaurs. Along the way, Crichton became an influential science populariser: general readers who would never dream of cracking open a scientific book happily consumed Crichton\´s detailed asides on polymerase chain reaction technique, remote sensing or chaos theory.