re-stated his atomic-power prognostication: Whereas we may be able to study the forms of life that may have developed on Mars and Venus (the best "inhabitable" planets of the solar system) in the not too distant future by means of an adventuresome trip to these planets on a "nuclear power propelled space ship," the question about the possible existence and the forms of life in other stellar worlds hundreds and thousands of light-years away, will probably remain forever an unsolvable problem of science. By that time the space race was underway with conventional chemical rockets. His book, The Creation of the Universe, was first published in 1952, concluding: "It took less than an hour to make all the atoms in the universe, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets but three billion years to make man." In 1956, he was awarded the Kalinga Prize by UNESCO for his work in popularizing science with his Mr. Tompkins... series of books (1939–1967), his book One, Two, Three...Infinity, and other works. Before his death, Gamow was working with Richard Blade on a textbook Basic Theories in Modern Physics, but the work was never completed or published under that title. Gamow was also writing My World Line: An Informal Autobiography, which was published posthumously in 1970. A collection of Gamow's writings was donated to The George Washington University in 1996. The materials include correspondence, articles, manuscripts and printed materials both by and about George Gamow. The collection is currently under the care of GWU's Special Collections Research Center, located in the Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library. Books Popular The Birth and Death of the Sun (1940, revised 1952) The Biography of the Earth (1941) Atomic Energy in Cosmic and Human Life (1946) One Two Three ... Infinity (1947, revised 1961), Viking Press (copyright renewed by Barbara Gamow, 1974), Dover Publications, , illustrated by the author. Dedicated to his son, Igor Gamow, it remains one of the most well received ever in the popular science genre. The book winds from mathematics to biology, to physics, crystallography, and more. The Moon (1953) Biography of Physics Harper & Brothers (1961) Gravity (1962) Dover Publications, . Profiles of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein A Planet Called Earth (1963) A Star Called the Sun (1964) Thirty Years That Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory, 1966, Dover Publications, . My World Line: An Informal Autobiography (1970)