Immanuel Velikovsky
| Immanuel Velikovsky | |
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Immanuel Velikovsky at the 1974 American Association for the Advancement of Science Conference in San Francisco
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| Born |
10 June 1895 Vitebsk, Russian Empire (in present-day Belarus) |
| Died | 17 November 1979 (aged 84) Princeton, New Jersey |
Immanuel Velikovsky (/ˌvɛliˈkɒfski/; Russian: Иммануи́л Велико́вский; IPA: [ɪmənʊˈil vʲɪlʲɪˈkofskʲɪj]; 10 June [O.S. 29 May] 1895 – 17 November 1979) was a Russian-Jewish independent scholar best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision published in 1950. Earlier, he played a role in the founding of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, and was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.
His books use comparative mythology and ancient literary sources (including the Old Testament) to argue that Earth suffered catastrophic close contacts with other planets (principally Venus and Mars) in ancient times. In positioning Velikovsky among catastrophists including Hans Bellamy, Ignatius Donnelly, and Johann Gottlieb Radlof, the British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier noted "... Velikovsky is not so much the first of the new catastrophists ... ; he is the last in a line of traditional catastrophists going back to mediaeval times and probably earlier." Velikovsky argued that electromagnetic effects play an important role in celestial mechanics. He also proposed a revised chronology for ancient Egypt, Greece, Israel and other cultures of the ancient Near East. The revised chronology aimed at explaining the so-called "dark age" of the eastern Mediterranean (c. 1100–750 BC) and reconciling biblical history with mainstream archaeology and Egyptian chronology.
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