Randall Munroe

Randall Munroe, a former NASA roboticist, is the creator of the webcomic xkcd and the author of xkcd: volume 0. The International Astronomical Union recently named an asteroid after him; asteroid 4942 Munroe is big enough to cause a mass extinction if it ever hits a planet like Earth. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Randall was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, and grew up outside Richmond, Virginia. After studying physics at Christopher Newport University, he got a job building robots at NASA Langley Research Center. In 2006 he left NASA to draw comics on the internet full-time and has since been nominated for a Hugo Award three times. The International Astronomical Union recently named an asteroid after him: asteroid 4942 Munroe is big enough to cause mass extinction if it ever hits a planet like Earth.

As of May 2008, Munroe lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. In October 2010, Munroe's fiancée was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer; there had been no prior family history. The emotional effect of her illness was referenced in the comic panel "Emotion," published 18 months later in April 2012. In September 2011, he announced that they had married. In November 2012, he published a comic entitled "Two Years', and in December 2017, Munroe followed this with a comic entitled "Seven Years." 

He revisited the subject in November 2020 in a comic entitled "Ten Years." His hobbies and interests include kite photography, in which cameras are attached to kites, and photographs are then taken of the ground or buildings.