Short answers, pulled from the story.
Arthur C. Clarke was an English science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television host who lived from the 16th of December 1917 to the 19th of March 2008. He earned the moniker "Prophet of the Space Age" and was knighted in 2000.
In a 1945 letter and paper in Wireless World, Arthur C. Clarke proposed that satellites in geostationary orbit would be ideal telecommunications relays giving worldwide radio coverage. The geostationary orbit 36000 km above the equator is now called the Clarke Orbit in his honour.
Arthur C. Clarke co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey with director Stanley Kubrick. He also wrote the novels Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama, and The Fountains of Paradise, and extended 2001 into a series including 2010: Odyssey Two, 2061: Odyssey Three, and 3001: The Final Odyssey.
Arthur C. Clarke immigrated to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in 1956 to pursue his interest in scuba diving, and he lived there until his death in 2008. He dived at Hikkaduwa, Trincomalee, and Nilaveli, discovered the sunken Koneswaram temple, and set up a dive school near Trincomalee.
The Big Three of science fiction were Arthur C. Clarke and the American writers Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. Clarke and Asimov struck the oral "Clarke-Asimov Treaty", agreeing to say Clarke was the better science fiction writer and Asimov the better science writer.
Arthur C. Clarke died in Colombo on the 19th of March 2008 at the age of 90. His aide described the cause as respiratory complications and heart failure stemming from post-polio syndrome, having originally contracted polio in 1962.
Arthur C. Clarke won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, including both for Rendezvous with Rama and The Fountains of Paradise, and a Hugo for his short story "The Star". He received the UNESCO-Kalinga Prize in 1961, was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1986, and was awarded Sri Lanka's Sri Lankabhimanya in 2005.