Robert Chester Wilson Ettingerwas an American academic, known as "the father of
cryonics" because of the impact of his 1962 book
The Prospect of Immortality died from respiratory failure he was , 92. He is considered by some a pioneer
transhumanist on the basis of his 1972 book
Man into Superman.
Ettinger founded the
Cryonics Institute and the related
Immortalist Society and until 2003 served as the groups' president. His body has been
cryopreserved, like the bodies of his first and second wives, and his mother.
(December 4, 1918
– July 23, 2011
)
Personal background
Ettinger was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants.
[7] He served as a
second lieutenant infantryman in the
United States Army during
World War II. Severely wounded in battle in
Germany, he received the
Purple Heart[1] and recovered after several years spent in a Michigan hospital.
[8] He earned two
Master's degrees from
Wayne State University (one in
physics, one in
mathematics) and spent his working career teaching physics and mathematics at both Wayne State University and
Highland Park Community College in
Michigan.
[1]
Ettinger had two children with his first wife, Elaine, David (1951) and Shelley (1954).
[1] David gave his first
cryonics interview to
journalists at the age of 12 and is an attorney. He currently serves as legal counsel to the Cryonics Institute and the Immortalist Society. Robert Ettinger's daughter has had no interest in cryonics.
Ettinger met his second wife, Mae Junod, in 1962 when she attended one of his adult education courses in basic physics. Junod typed and assisted with editing the manuscripts for both
The Prospect of Immortality and
Man into Superman. She became active in the Cryonics Society of Michigan (CSM) and edited and was production manager for the CSM monthly newsletter,
The Outlook. In the 1970s
The Outlook was renamed
The Immortalist and Junod continued editorship until the mid-1990s.
The Outlook is the longest continuously published cryonics magazine. Junod was an
author,
feminist, and
marriage counselor.
Ettinger married Junod in 1988 after the death of his first wife.
[1] Ettinger described his time with Junod as one of the most satisfying and tranquil times in his life. The couple moved to
Scottsdale, Arizona in 1995 and enjoyed a period of domestic life during which time the couple began to ease into retirement from over 30 years of cryonics activism and the attendant burdens of work and controversy.
[1] Mae Ettinger suffered a debilitating stroke in 1998 from which she never fully recovered followed by a lethal
stroke in 2000, which resulted in her cryopreservation.
Ettinger died on July 23, 2011 in Detroit, Michigan of natural causes, and was cryopreserved.
[9][2]
Roots of cryonics in science fiction
Ettinger grew up reading
Hugo Gernsback's
Amazing Stories.
[10] Ettinger was particularly affected when he was 12 years old by a
Neil R. Jones story, "The Jameson Satellite," which appeared in the July 1931 issue of
Amazing Stories,
[10] in which one Professor Jameson had his
corpse sent into earth
orbit where (as the author mistakenly thought) it would remain preserved indefinitely at near
absolute zero. And so it did, in the story, until millions of years later, when, with humanity extinct, a race of mechanical men with
organic brains chanced upon it. They revived and repaired Jameson's brain, installed it in a mechanical body, and he became one of their company.
[1]
Ettinger assumed that one day — long before he grew old —
biologists would learn the secret of
eternal youth. As he grew out of boyhood in the 1930s, he began to suspect it might take a little longer since no scientists were yet working on this particular endeavor.
[10] If
immortality is achievable through the ministrations of technologically advanced aliens repairing a frozen human corpse, then Ettinger thought everyone could be
cryopreserved to await later rescue by our own
medically more sophisticated
descendants.
[10]
In 1947 while in the hospital for his battle wounds, Ettinger discovered that research in the area of
cryogenics was being done by French biologist
Jean Rostand; Ettinger wrote a short story elucidating the concept of human
cryopreservation as a pathway to more sophisticated future medical technology: in effect, a form of one-way medical time travel. The story, "The Penultimate Trump," was published in the March 1948 issue of
Startling Stories[1] and definitively establishes Ettinger's priority as the first person to have promulgated the cryonics
paradigm, principally that contemporary
medical/
legal definitions of death are relative, not absolute, and are critically dependent upon the sophistication of available
medical technology. Thus, a person apparently dead of a
heart attack in a tribal village in the
Amazon will soon become unequivocally so, whereas the same person with the same condition in the emergency department of large,
industrialized city's hospital, might well be resuscitated and continue a long and healthy life. Ettinger observed that criteria for death will vary not just from place to place, but from time to time, and so today's
corpse could be tomorrow's
patient.
Launching the cryonics movement
Ettinger waited expectantly for prominent scientists or
physicians to come to the same conclusion he had, and to take a position of public advocacy. By 1960, Ettinger finally made the scientific case for the idea, which had always been in the back of his mind. Ettinger was 42 years old and said he was increasingly aware of his own mortality.
[10] In what has been characterized as an historically important
mid-life crisis,
[10] Ettinger summarized the idea of cryonics in a few pages, with the emphasis on
life insurance, and sent this to approximately 200 people whom he selected from
Who's Who in America.
[10] The response was very small, and it was clear that a much longer exposition was needed — mostly to counter cultural bias. Ettinger correctly saw that people, even the intellectually, financially and socially distinguished, would have to be educated into understanding his belief that dying is usually gradual and could be a reversible process, and that
freezing damage is so limited (even though fatal by present criteria) that its reversibility demands relatively little in future progress. Ettinger soon made an even more troubling discovery, principally that "a great many people have to be coaxed into admitting that life is better than death, healthy is better than sick, smart is better than stupid, and
immortality might be worth the trouble!"
[10]
In 1962, Ettinger privately published a preliminary version of
The Prospect of Immortality, in which he said that future technological advances could be used to bring people back to life. This finally attracted attention of a major
publisher, which sent a copy to
Isaac Asimov; Asimov said that the science behind cryonics was sound,
[8] and the manuscript was approved for a 1964
Doubleday hardcover and various subsequent editions which launched cryonics.
[1] The book became a selection of the
Book of the Month Club and was published in nine languages.
[8]
Ettinger became an "overnight"
[10] media celebrity, discussed in
The New York Times,
Time,
Newsweek,
Paris Match,
Der Spiegel,
Christian Century, and dozens of other periodicals. He appeared on television with
David Frost,
Johnny Carson,
Steve Allen, and others. Ettinger also spoke on radio programs coast-to-coast to promote the idea of human
cryopreservation.
Since the commercial publication of
The Prospect of Immortality, all those active in cryonics today can trace their involvement, directly or indirectly, to the publication of one or both of Ettinger's books.
[citation needed] While Ettinger was the first, most articulate, and most scientifically credible person to argue the idea of cryonics,
[citation needed] he was not the only one. In 1962, Evan Cooper had authored a manuscript entitled
Immortality: Scientifically, Physically, Now under the pseudonym Nathan Duhring.
[11] Cooper's book contained the same argument as did Ettinger's, but it lacked both scientific and technical rigor and was not of publication quality.
[citation needed]
Organizational activities
Following publication of
The Prospect of Immortality, Ettinger again waited for prominent scientists, industrialists, or others in authority to see the wisdom of his idea and begin implementing it. By contrast, Cooper was an activist and must be credited with forming the first cryonics organization (although the word "cryonics" was not to be coined until 1965) the Life Extension Society (LES). LES advocated immediate action to implement human
cryopreservation and established a nationwide network of chapters and coordinators to develop a
grassroots capability for delivering cryopreservation on an emergent basis. Cooper left cryonics activism in 1969, and was lost at sea in 1983. But his activities with LES provided the basis for the formation of the first Cryonics Societies.
In 1966 the Cryonics Societies of California and Michigan were formed. Ettinger was elected
President of the Cryonics Society of Michigan (CSM). In 1970s CSM was transformed under the direction of Ettinger into the
Cryonics Institute (CI) and the
Immortalist Society (IS). In 1977, Ettinger's mother, Rhea Ettinger, became CI's first patient
[12]. Ettinger was President of both CI and IS until 2003.
From 1964 until
circa 1990 the growth of the cryonics movement was slow. During this period cryonicists suffered from lack of consistent or quality professional medical, legal, philosophical, business or financial support. Admission of interest in, or advocacy of cryopreservation, uniformly resulted in reactions of revulsion, ridicule, or both. Media and public perception were consistently negative. This external pressure was exacerbated by the anxiety and fear felt as cryonicists experienced the death of cohorts and loved ones and were, of necessity, forced to provide whatever level of care they could manage on a more or less mutual aid basis. Cryonics, contrary to public perception at this time, was (and still is) a middle class undertaking, and the resources available were those of mortuary personnel and equipment and procedures which cryonicists were able to construct and devise themselves. An additional worry was the uncertain legal status of cryonics and the ever present possibility of governmental interdiction.
The growth of the
internet has made a crucial difference to the spread of
cryonics as an idea, which, despite much
media coverage, seems to be mainly dependent upon personal contact and personal investigation.
Death
Ettinger died in suburban Detroit on July 23, 2011 at his home in
Clinton Township, Michigan. He was 92. The cause was
respiratory failure. Ettinger’s body was placed in a cryonic capsule and frozen at minus 371 degrees Fahrenheit, after several days of cooling preparation. Mr. Ettinger was the institute’s 106th client.
Quotes by Ettinger
"I had and have, no credentials worth mentioning being only a teacher of college physics and math. It is precisely this that prevented me, for so long, from doing more: I knew I carried no weight, had no formal qualifications, and was not suited for a leadership role. But as the years passed and no one better came forward, I finally had to write, and later felt I had to form organizations (although others had come into existence). This tragedy, in various manifestations, may persist. Potentially effective leaders may have turned aside because I (and later a few other obscure people) reluctantly preempted leadership. Business people and investors may have hesitated because the small, poorly capitalized organizations already in the field have had such limited (although increasing!) success in attracting participants."
"Tragedy is in the eye of the beholder. As
Sid Caesar (or maybe
Mel Brooks – one of those really heavy thinkers) said: 'The difference between
comedy and
tragedy? When the
saber tooth tiger eats Moe, that's comedy. When I get a hangnail, that's tragedy.' And if the Tiger of Death eats you, that is the ultimate tragedy; that is when the world ends, when the cosmos disappears, when Everything becomes Nothing."
"The 'tragedy' of the slow growth of
immortalism pertains mostly to them, and perhaps to you – not so much to me or to us, the committed immortalists. We already have made our arrangements for
cryostasis after clinical death – signed our contracts with existing organizations and allocated the money. We will have our chance, and with a little bit of luck will 'taste the wine of centuries
Books by Ettinger
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