J anet Asimov was born Janet Jeppson on August 6, 1926, in Ashland, Pennsylvania, to John Rufus Jeppson, a physician, and Rae (nee Knudson) Jeppson.

She attended Wellesley College from 1944 to 1946, then Stanford University in 1948, where she received her bachelor's degree. She then attended the College of Medicine at New York University, earning her M.D. in 1952. She interned at the Philadelphia General Hospital from 1952 to 1953. From 1953 to 1956, she was a resident in psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. In 1955, she began postdoctoral studies at the William A. White Psychoanalytic Institute, ending them in 1960. She began private practice in 1956. From 1967 to 1971, she served as assistant director of clinical services at the William A. White Psychoanalytic Institute, and from 1974 to 1982, she was the Institute's director of training.

Janet Asimov published her first short story in Saint magazine in 1966.

About the same time, she began work...