Portrait of Murray Leinster

Birthday profile

Murray Leinster

Murray Leinster, American author and screenwriter (died 1976)

Born
June 16, 1896
Died
June 8, 1975
Zodiac sign
Gemini
Birth year
1896

About Murray Leinster

Murray Leinster was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. Leinster's 1945 novella "First Contact" is also credited as one of the first (if not the first) instances of a universal translator in science fiction. In 2000, Leinster's heirs sued Paramount Pictures over the film Star Trek: First Contact, claiming that it infringed their trademark in the term. In the 1930s, he published several science fiction stories and serials in Amazing and Astounding Stories (the first issue of Astounding included his story "Tanks").

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Murray Leinster timeline

  1. Leinster's 1945 novella "First Contact" is also credited as one of the first (if not the first) instances of a universal translator in science fiction.
  2. In 2000, Leinster's heirs sued Paramount Pictures over the film Star Trek: First Contact, claiming that it infringed their trademark in the term.

The world when Murray Leinster was born

Murray Leinster was born in 1896. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst modern Olympic Games held in Athens
  • Top headlinePlessy v. Ferguson — "separate but equal" upheld
  • Technology milestoneGuglielmo Marconi patents wireless telegraph (radio)
  • World population~1.56B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderGrover Cleveland
  • U.S. population69.0M

1896 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Murray Leinster's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18962026
Population69.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, IMDb, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.