Timothy created the master tactician Grand Admiral Thrawn in 1991 with his appearance in his novel, Heir To the Empire.
Timothy Zahn is responsible for creating numerous characters and writing so many beloved legends and now canon books in the Star Wars Universe. Apart from Mr. Lucas himself, few storytellers have been involved with the Star Wars franchise as long as Timothy.
Timothy Zahn was born in Chicago in 1951 and grew up in the western suburb of Lombard. He attended Michigan State University, earning a B.S. degree in physics in 1973, and moved on to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. He earned a M.S. degree there, also in physics, in 1975, and continued work toward a doctorate. Also in 1975, he began a new hobby: writing science fiction. At first a strictly spare-time avocation, but over the next three years he gradually gave more time to it until he sold his first story in December 1978 (“Ernie,” Analog, September 1979). In 1980 he left grad school and began writing full-time.
Since then he has published sixty-five novels, over a hundred short stories and novelettes, and five collections of short fiction. Best known for his sixteen Star Wars novels, he is also the author of the Quadrail series, the Cobra series, the Conquerors trilogy, the Sibyl’s War trilogy, and the young-adult Dragonback series.