Many tend to think of being educated as something that has to do with the number of years of schooling we have or the degrees we earn. Asimov did indeed meet those criteria, but his real education was broader than that. It was deeper than what he learned from instruction.
In fact, this real education is what added to the subtle depth of his fiction, and perhaps more importantly, it’s what allowed him to reliably write about so many diverse, interesting topics. Fortunately, exploring his story, we can dissect precisely how he did that.
If you look close enough, you will realize that books like Tolstoy’s War and Peace tell you more about history than most history books. Likewise, you can better understand human psychology reading Dostoevsky’s masterpieces than you can pop-psychology best-sellers.
Great teachers have to think with a profound level of clarity. They have to strip away the crutches of big words and existing frameworks to break something down to a level at which it becomes obvious; simple, even. It’s at this level that knowledge is truly understood.
Even when writing his books, he would nudge the topic just outside the peripheries of his existing understanding of the world. From there, he would be incentivized to learn as much about it and to think as clearly about it as he could before getting a start on the project.
It’s often said that the best way to learn or to be educated is to teach, and there is a truth to that because teaching forces you to dig down to a core understanding that many neglect.