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The resulting one is pretty massive too, if it were twice as big I'd probably never even tried it because there's no way I could finish it. So far I'm about 1/3 in, and he already talked a lot about how his science career sucked, unlike his writing. Given that I had always been his fan and yet was never sure (or interested, to be honest) about what he did as a scientist, that's not a surprise.
If you go to his Google Scholar page and look at the list by citation count it's topped by fiction ("I, Robot": 2670 citations), then adds popular science writing ("Asimov's biographical encyclopedia of science and technology", 663) and other non-fiction, then eventually gets down to science textbooks ("Biochemistry and human metabolism", 54) and science research ("Acidâphosphatase activity of normal and neoplastic human tissues", 48).
IIRC it could have been even worse. He went into biochemistry, so was relatively immune to the quantum chemistry revolution sweeping upward through the field, but I recall him describing the horror with which experienced chemists discovered that they would have to practically get a second degree in physics just to keep their own chemistry research relevant.
It's kind of a shame that he's now much better-known for his science fiction writing than his science writing, though. He jokingly had the "Clarke-Asimov treaty", acknowledging Asimov to be the second-best SF writer and Clarke the second-best science writer, but IMHO with SF Asimov was (among their contemporaries) second-best to Heinlein, whereas with pop science he really was the best around.
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