Gene was born in El Paso, Texas, on August 19, 1921, although he spent much of his childhood in Los Angeles. After studying for three years of pre-law at college, he transferred to aeronautical engineering and soon qualified for a pilot's license.

In the fall of 1941, Gene had just turned twenty two, and he volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Emerging from Kelly Field, Texas, as a Second Lieutenant, Roddenberry was sent to the South Pacific where he entered combat at Guadalcanal, flying B-17 bombers out of the newly-captured Japanese airstrip, which became Henderson Field. He flew missions against enemy strongholds at Bougainville and participated in the Munda invasion. In all, he took part in 89 missions and sorties. He was decorated with the Distinguished flying Cross and the Air Medal.

While in the South Pacific, he also began to write. He sold stories to flying magazines, and later poetry to publications including The New York Times. Upon his return from combat, he became a trouble-shooter for the Air Force working out of Washington, D.C., investigating the causes of air crashes. At war's end, he joined Pan American World Airways. During this time, he also studied literature at Columbia University.

It was on a flight from Calcutta that his plane lost two engines and caught fire in flight, crashing at night in the Syrian desert. As the senior surviving officer, Roddenberry sent two Englishmen swimming across the Euphrates River in quest of the source of a light he had observed just prior to the crash impact. Meanwhile, he parleyed with nomads who had come to loot the dead. The Englishmen reached a Syrian military outpost, which sent a small plane to investigate. Roddenberry returned with the small plane to the outpost, where he broadcast a message that was relayed to Pan Am, which sent a stretcher plane to the rescue. Roddenberry later received a Civil Aeronautics commendation for his efforts during and after the crash.

Back in the States, Roddenberry continued flying, while serving the Los Angeles Police Force for 8 years (1949 – 1956), with the badge number 6089. But when he saw television for the first time. Correctly estimating television's future, he realized that the new entertainment medium would need writers and decided that Hollywood's film studios would soon dominate the new industry. He acted immediately, left his flying career behind and went to Hollywood, only to find the television industry still in its infancy, with few openings for inexperienced writers. At a friend's suggestion, he joined the Los Angeles Police Department in order to see life from perspectives valuable to a writer.

By the time he had achieved the rank of Sergeant, Roddenberry was selling scripts to several shows, including “The Kaiser Aluminum Hour”, "Goodyear Theatre," "Four Star Theater," "Dragnet," "The Jane Wyman Theater" and "Naked City." Pleased with the way his new-found career as a television writer was going, he soon turned over his badge and became a freelance writer. Later, he served as head writer for the highly popular series "Have Gun, Will Travel." His episode "Helen of Abiginian" won the Writers Guild Award and was distributed to other writers as a model script for the series. Next, he created and produced "The Lieutenant" TV series, starring Gary Lockwood and Robert Vaughn, the story of a young man learning the lessons of life while in the United States Marine Corps. But his most important production was still to come.

"Star Trek" premiered in September 1966, and lasted three whole seasons on the American television network NBC. Two pilot episodes were produced for this radical new series, one of which was classed as being "too cerebral" by the network and so was rejected. Once on the air, however, "Star Trek" developed a loyal following and has since become the first television series to have an episode preserved in the Smithsonian, where an 11-foot model of the U.S.S. Enterprise is also exhibited on the same floor as the Wright brothers' original airplane and Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis." In addition to the Smithsonian honors, NASA's first space shuttle was named "Enterprise," in response to hundreds of thousands of letters from fans demanding that the shuttle be named after the beloved Starship which captured their imagination. After the third season on the air, “Star Trek” was cancelled, outraging loyal fans across America. During the this time, Gene had begun preliminary projects, such as Battleground: Earth, and various other concepts, some of which never made it to the pilot stage.

However, in the seventy’s, Paramount Pictures became interested in exploring the possibility of continuing the “Star Trek” saga, and commissioned a feature film, which became a huge success, leading on to future movies, as well as a second series – “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.

Roddenberry served as a member of the Writers Guild Executive Council and as a Governor of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He held three honorary doctorate degrees: Doctor of Humane Letters from Emerson College in Boston, Mass.; Doctor of Literature from Union College in Los Angeles (1977), and Doctor of Science from Clarkson College in Potsdam, New York (1981).

On September 4, 1986, Gene Roddenberry's fans presented him with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the first writer/producer to be so honored. "Star Trek: The Next Generation," in its first year in syndication, was awarded with the 1987 Peabody Award for the "Best of the Best." To date, the series has garnered a total of eleven prestigious Emmy awards. In February 1990, the March of Dimes honored Roddenberry with the Jack Benny Memorial Award for lifetime achievement.

Sadly, Gene Roddenberry passed away in October 1991 of a cardiac arrest in Santa Monica, California, leaving many of his works unfinished. As a tribute to his greatness, some of his ashes sent up in a rocket, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. But not even death could stop this legendary writer. His wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry (known for her role in “Star Trek” as Lwaxana Troi) discovered what became known as ‘The Lost Manuscript’ – Gene’s plans and concepts for various projects, including one entitled “Battleground: Earth”, which Gene was particularly interested in producing. The Battleground project went into production thanks to Majel, becoming known as “Gene Roddenberry’s EARTH: Final Conflict”. Its success soon led the way to developing other Roddenberry related projects, including “Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda” (which was an amalgamation of multiple concepts).

For more information about the Roddenberry Creations and the Roddenberry family, please visit Roddenberry.com.