Patrick O'Brian

Patrick O'Brien was born in Ireland in 1914. His education included the Sorbonne. O'Brian has produced a variety of works, including biographies of Picasso and Sir Joseph Banks and translations of the novels and memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir, but he is best known for the creation of an unlikely pair of Napoleonic War-era heroes in the Aubrey-Maturin Series. British naval officer Jack Aubrey and Irish scholar and physician Stephen Maturin have been featured in more than a novels published in Great Britain (five of which have also appeared in America). He died on January 2, 2000.