Professor John Brand was born in the Rotherhithe section of London, England in 1995. He came to America in 2013 attending college at Oxford University, graduating with a doctorate in physics in 2022. He spent much of his early career as a professor at the University of Colorado before going to work for NASA in the 2030's, during the famine wars. By 2055, space travel was no longer funded by the government and NASA had become a secret organization located in an underground bunker near Colorado Springs. In the early 2050's, Brand had arranged 12 astronauts to secretly be sent out to explore potentially habitable worlds while he remained to try to solve the equation of gravity to get people off Earth and into space living on space stations. After having sent out the crew of the Endurance space mission in 2065, he remained. In 2076, he recruited Murph Cooper, straight out of college, to be his assistant in physics to help him solve the equation, but both of them worked together for almost 15 years with little progress. John Brand had contracted pneumonia in 2091 at the age of 96. He confessed to Murph on his deathbed that he had lied to people about the possibility of launching the space stations and that it wasn't possible and died right afterwards. Nevertheless, Murph had not lost hope and knew Brand didn't scheme, but gave half the equation and succeeded soon afterwards. Show less «