People Profiles

By Paul Adams

Harry Price – An Appreciation of his Life and Times: All fields of human activity have their pioneers in whose footsteps the next generations follow, and by laying down the foundations of their particular disciplines they enable these future colleagues to build their contributions and discoveries. Psychical research is no exception. In its modern terms as ‘parapsychology’ it has been defined by the work of the American Joseph Banks Rhine (1885-1980), indeed the ‘Father of Modern Parapsychology’ who began carrying out experiments in telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition at Duke University in North Carolina in the 1930s.

Before Rhine, psychical research as it was still termed continued to be quite a mixed bag which the investigators of the time attempted to study and evaluate - séance room phenomena, spontaneous cases of haunting, crisis apparitions, dream cases and so on. During the early decades of the 20^th century, exponents on both sides of the Atlantic continued the study of phenomena that was the staple fare of the Victorian scientists and academics that had founded institutions such as the Society for Psychical Research at Cambridge and the American Society for Psychical Research in Boston. In particular some of these notables acted as popular educators in bringing the subject of the scientific study of the paranormal before the general public.

In America, British born Hereward Carrington (1880-1958) was a prolific writer who personally carried out much work with spiritualist mediums before the First World War and continued this on into the 1920s and 1930s. His most famous association was with the great Italian medium Eusapia Palladino. Carrington was to be followed by Hans Holzer (born 1920) who began to produce a series of popular guides to the supernatural chronicling his investigations in the 1960s. In England notable Victorian scientists Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) and Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) carried out extensive work with the mediums of the day, Crookes famously with Florence Cook with whose ‘spirit’ entity Katie King he was photographed...

A new discovery has revealed what could be the real-life inspiration behind the Victor Hugo character Quasimodo.Clues have emerged via the memoirs of 19th-century British sculptor Henry Sibson who recalls a hunched back stonemason working at Notre Dame cathedral at around the time the book was written. With hishunched back and deformed face, Quasimodo, the tragic hero of Victor Hugo"s novel The Hunch Back of Notre Dame, has always been considered a mythical creation drawn from the depths of the author"s imagination.



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One of the panels in the Sistine Chapel may hold a hidden illustration of the human brain by Michelangelo.Michelangelo was an avid anatomy student but later destroyed all his notes and drawings on the topic. The new find however which appears to show a human brain hidden in one of the Sistine Chapel"s panels could challenge that notion. Michelangelo is recognisedas one of the greatest painters and sculptors from the Italian Renaissance.

What is not so widely known is that he was an avid student of anatomy who once persuaded a Florentine prior to let him study the corpses in his church hospital. But he went on to destroy almost of all of his anatomical sketches and notes.

View: Full article | Source: DailyMail

In a controversial move Thomas Harvey who performed an autopsy on Einstein removed his brain and made off with it.Harvey believed that is was his duty to use the brain to unlock the secrets of Einstein"s genius. It was a questionnable move and one which lost him his job and saw him denounced by his colleagues, but whathappened next ? In the 55 years since Albert Einstein"s death, many scientists have tried to figure out what made him so smart.

But no one tried harder than a pathologist named Thomas Harvey, who lost his job and his reputation in a quest to unlock the secrets of Einstein"s genius.

View: Full article | Source: NPR