Douglas Noel Adams (photo ©Michael Hughes) was born on March 11, 1952 in Cambridge, England. The year after his birth the structure of the DNA was discovered and Adams often used that acronym, which corresponded to his initials, as a nickname.

Douglas Adams had already started writing when he was a student, and he got excellent grades in creative writing. He studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he obtained a B.A. in English literature in 1974.

In the period after graduation, Douglas Adams worked as an author for the BBC and started collaborating with Monty Python, even doing a few appearances in their sketches.

The style of Douglas Adams was ill-suited to the kind of comedy airing during those years on radio and television so he had to find other jobs to support himself. In 1978, however, he wrote the radio series “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, which was a huge success. Adams said that the idea for the series came to him while he was lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria.

The radio series lasted until 1980 but Douglas Adams adapted it into a series of novels: “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” in 1979, “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” in 1980, “Life, the Universe and Everything” in 1982″, “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” in 1984 and “Mostly Harmless” in 1992.

The first three novels were adapted into a television series of 6 episodes broadcast in 1982. The last three novels were adapted into a new radio series called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary to Quintessential Phases” broadcast in 2004-2005. The story of “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was also adapted into two movies, one in 1981 and another in 2005. On several occasions, that story was also adapted for stage plays.

In 1978, Douglas Adams started working in various ways with the production of the famous television series “Doctor Who”. For a while, he was a script editor but he also wrote, on his own or with a colleague, the screenplays for the adventures “The Pirate Planet“, “City of Death” and “Shada”.

In 1987, Douglas Adams started another series of novels, the one about Dirk Gently, publishing “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”, which was followed by “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” in 1988. The third novel, “The Salmon of Doubt” remained unfinished because of Adams’s death and was published in 2002, including various letters and articles by the author.

Some of the articles written by Douglas Adams concerned technologies he became passionate about, so much so that he was the co-founder of a company of multimedia productions, which created even videogames.

Douglas Adams married Jane Belson on November 24, 1991, and in 1994 their daughter Polly Jane was born.

Douglas Adams was also a musician and was a friend of the Pink Floyd, also appearing as a guest at one of their concerts in which he played two songs on acoustic guitar. Among his other musician friends, there were guitarist David Gilmour and Gary Brooker of Procol Harum.

Douglas Adams was also interested in science and, despite being known for his humor, in his various works, there’s important scientific content. He became friends with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins: he introduced him to actress Lalla Ward and the two of them got married.

Douglas Adams died on May 11, 2001, in Santa Barbara, California, because of a heart attack. His untimely death took from us one of the greatest English comic writers of the second half of the XX century.

In honor of Douglas Adams, his fans created the “Towel Day”, celebrated for the first time on May 25, 2001, which however became an annual event. The towel is an important item in the series of “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and on that day fans bring it along with them. Other proposed dates for the “Towel Day” are connected to the number 42, the ultimate number in that series.