S. P. (Sterner St. Paul) Meek

Born in 1894, he was an American chemist, soldier, and prolific pulp author who wrote as S. P. Meek, short for Sterner St. Paul Meek. He studied science, served in the U.S. Army, and worked in military research, experiences that gave his fiction a practical, technical flavor.

He became a familiar name in the early science-fiction magazines, publishing energetic adventures in magazines such as Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories. He is especially remembered for the Dr. Bird series, which mixed super-science ideas with action and helped make him one of the better-known magazine SF writers of his era.

Beyond fiction, his career linked him to the world of chemistry and ordnance research, making him one of those early genre writers whose day job and imagination clearly fed each other. He died in 1972, but his stories remain part of the foundation of classic pulp science fiction.