Douglas Noel Adams was born in Cambridge on March 11, 1952.  He went to school at Brentwood School, Essex and St John's College, Cambridge.  In 1974 he gained an MA in English Literature.

He started writing at Cambridge.  Some of his earlier writings were featured on the radio.  He went on from radio to become the script editor of Doctor Who where he wrote a couple of stories for the Tom Baker incarnation of the Doctor (4th Doctor).  He wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which was comissioned and aired as a radio series in March 1978.  Since then it has been transformed into a series of best-selling novels, a television series, records, cassettes and CDs, a computer game and several stage adaptations.

In 1991 he married Jane Elizabeth Belson and leaves a daughter, Polly Jane Rocket.  Douglas Adams died suddenly of a heart attack on May 11, 2001