James Bond 007 is a fictional character created in 1952 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in 12 novels and two anthologies. The character has also been used in the longest running and 2nd most successful film franchise to date, starting in 1962 with Dr. No. There have been 21 films in the EON Productions series to date, with the 22nd, Quantum of Solace', due for release in November 2008. In addition there have been two independent feature productions (a 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale starring David Niven in the title role, and 1983's Never Say Never Again) and one Fleming-licenced American television adaptation of the first novel, aired in 1954. In 1956, Moonraker was also adapted into a South African radio play starring Bob Holness as Bond. By the year 1990 You Only Live Twice was adapted into a 90 minute radio play for BBC Radio 4 with Michael Jayston playing James Bond

After Fleming's death in 1964, subsequent James Bond novels were written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham), John Pearson, John Gardner and Raymond Benson. In addition Charlie Higson has begun to write a series of books detailing the "Young James Bond". In July 2007, it was announced that Sebastian Faulks has been commissioned to write a Bond novel for publication in 2008. Moreover, Christopher Wood novelised two screenplays, while other writers have authored unofficial versions of the character.

In 2008, BBC Radio 4 was granted the rights for a one-shot broadcast of a radio adaptation of another 007 novel: Dr. No, with Toby Stephens (who portrayed the villain in Die Another Day) as James Bond. The EON Productions films are generally termed as "official" films originating with the purchase of the James Bond film rights by producer Harry Saltzman in the late 1950s.

Away from movies, TV and radio, Bond has also been adapted for many other media, including comic strips and video games.

James Bond (January 4, 1900 - February 14, 1989) was a leading American ornithologist whose name was appropriated by writer Ian Fleming for his fictional spy James Bond.

The real Bond was born in Philadelphia and worked as an ornithologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences in that city, rising to become curator of birds there. He was an expert in Caribbean birds and wrote the definitive book on the subject: Birds of the West Indies, first published in 1936 and, in its fifth edition, still in print (ISBN 0-618-00210-3).

Ian Fleming, who was a keen bird watcher living in Jamaica, was familiar with Bond's book, and chose the name of its author for the hero of Casino Royale in 1953, apparently because he wanted a name that sounded 'as ordinary as possible'. Fleming wrote to the real Bond's wife, "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born." In the twentieth James Bond film, Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan, playing the fictional Bond, can be seen examining the book Birds of the West Indies in an early scene that takes place in Havana, Cuba. Bond won the Institute of Jamaica's Musgrave Medal in 1952; the Brewster Medal of the American Ornithologists Union in 1954; and the Leidy Medal of the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1975.

He died in the Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia at age 89.

James Bond is a former head coach of the Buffalo Bulls college football program from 1923.