Robert Jordan was born James Oliver Rigney Jr. on October 17, 1948 in Charleston, South Carolina. He received a B.S. in physics from The Citadel in 1974. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam with the U.S. Army and won The Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star and two Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry. From 1974 to 1978, he worked for the U.S. Civil Service as a nuclear engineer. In 1981, he married Harriet McDougal and they have one son. Jordan began writing, during the 1980's, several novels for the "Conan the Barbarian" series that was created in the 1930's by Robert E. Howard. He has also written under many pseudonyms, which include the historical novels "The Fallon Blood" (1980),… "The Fallon Pride" (1981) and "The Fallon Legacy" (1982) as Reagan O'Neal; and the western "Cheyenne Riders" (1982) as Jackson O'Reilly. He has also written articles for periodicals for the Library Journal, Fantasy Review and Science Fiction Review as Chang Lung. Jordan is the author of the Wheel of Time series whose first novel is "The Eye of the World" (1990). He died on September 16, 2007 following a battle with cardiac amyloidosis.