Eugene Burdick
Leonard Eugene Burdick ( born December 12, 1918 in Sheldon ( Iowa); † July 26, 1965 in Sarasota ) was an American political scientist and author.
Burdick was co-author of The Ugly American (1958) and Fail Safe ( German: Fire will fall from the sky, 1962) and author of The 480 ( 1964). At the age of four he moved with his parents to Los Angeles. He attended Stanford University and the University of Oxford, received his PhD in psychology and worked at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of California. In 1956 his first novel, The Ninth Wave was released. In the late 1950s he was one of the first members of the Society for General Systems Research. He died in 1965 at the age of 46 years to a myocardial infarction.