Cryonics Institute Founder Robert Ettinger

Cryonics Institute Facilities Manager Andy Zawacki

Ben discovered cryonics many years ago, when he bought Robert Ettinger's PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY in a health-food store in Vancouver, Canada. He has been deeply involved in cryonics since the late 1980s, and was one of the founders of the Cryonics Society of Canada (CSC), was President for most of the 1990s, and remains a Director of that organization.

Ben is also President of the Institute For Neural Cryobiology, the charitable organization that funded the Hippocampal Slice Cryopreservation Project (HSCP) which was executed by Dr. Yuri Pichugin. Ben was also formerly a President of the CryoCare Foundation.

In addition to his organizational activities since the late 1980s, Ben has attended virtually every significant cryonics conference. His travels have allowed him to meet cryonicists in Australia/New Zealand and Europe as well as throughout North America. For accounts of his travels see: www.benbest.com/travel/travel.html.

In recent years Ben Best has lived and worked as a professional computer programmer in Toronto, Canada, specializing in database applications in the financial and banking industries.

Ben has written extensively on the subject of cryonics, life extension and many other topics. Many of his writings on these subjects can be found on his website at www.benbest.com/

To read his writings on cryonics topics (many of which are technical in nature) see www.benbest.com/cryonics/cryonics.html

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R.A. ('Royse') Brown was born in and lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was educated at Howe Military in the Florida Keys, and at Washington, D.C.

He holds a BA in Foreign Affairs, a Masters in History, Interdisciplinary Ph.D. work in the social foundations of university administration, Ed.D work in urban education, and postgraduate work in medicine, law ("and whatever").

Royse has served as parliamentarian to his faculty senate, and on various educational and community Boards of Directors. A life member of the Ohio Retired Teacher's Association, Royse is also a member of the University of Cincinnati Alumni Association, the AARP, the Ohio Gun Collectors Association, and the NRA.

Royse has travelled on all continents, has lived in Alaska, California, Florida, and Hawaii, is multilingual, was a resident of Costa Rica, is a U.S. resident and is also a resident of France. His hobbies are exploring overseas investment and business opportunities, finding backyard places to dock sailboats, politics, and continuing to savor the noble joys of bachelorhood.

Some years back Royse, as he puts it, "read about Bob Ettinger, and decided to drive to Michigan and look him up". Within two hours of hearing about cryonics and meeting Bob and his wife Mae, Royse toured CI and joined both the Immortalist Society and CI on the spot, and signed and fully funded his suspension on the spot with American Express travelers' check, thus setting a record in becoming our first and fastest cash-prepaid cryonics member.

He's been a CI Director and Officer for several years, but Royse has also been notable as a roving ambassador, fraternizing with, and encouraging donations to, most other cryonics organizations and activities.

He can be contacted at rabrown2001@aol.com

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Constance M. Ettinger, J.D. (Doctor of Jurisprudence), is a native of Michigan, and a resident of that state. She currently resides in Franklin, Michigan with her husband, David Ettinger, who is himself an attorney with a large Detroit law firm and the son of Robert Ettinger.

Connie and David met at the University of Michigan as law students, and Connie is a long-time legal professional as well, having received both her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. She has been a licensed attorney for 19 years, previously specializing in personnel and employment law.

An especially active member of the Cryonics Institute for several years, Connie assisted physically in a suspension in 1987, has often hosted meetings, and is currently serving as Contract Officer. (When members join or suspensions are performed, the Contract Officer signs on behalf of CI, verifies that the forms are properly executed, and also helps out members with individual problems or special circumstances.)

Connie is now acting Vice President of the Franklin Community Association. Her main hobby (and delight) is comedy, and she occasionally performs stand-up routines in various clubs throughout the Detroit area.

She says of herself, "Raised in the wilds of northern Michigan, Connie is adept at hunting and killing her own food. Such skills made it natural for her to become a disreputable attorney. Her favorite activities include thinking up new uses for the word "irregardless".

She can be contacted at cdettin@aol.com

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Marta Sandberg was born in Sweden in 1955, but has lived all her adult life in Australia.

Marta has a wide-ranging fascination with science and studied mathematics for her first degree. She more recently acquired another degree, this time in accountancy (B.Bus.). In Australia the university accountancy degree gives her full stature as an accountant, even without the professional-body certifications (CPA, Certified Practicing Accountant or CA, Chartered Accountant). She may gain these certifications in the course of her working or she may return to university to get a PhD.

In 2007 she moved north from her former residence near Perth to start working for the Marra Worra Worra Aboriginal Corporation in Fitzroy Crossing as a Managerial Accountant. It is very small town in the top western corner of Australia. She finds her new job extremely challenging, job so her work is still her passion and interest.

However soon after moving to Fitzroy Crossing she joined the local State Emergency Services team and enrolled for art classes. Other hobbies include swimming; reading almost anything; scuba diving (but there aren't a lot of opportunities when she currently lives on the edge of a desert) and unsuccessfully trying to cultivate snotty gobbles (look it up, she says).

Her interest in cryonics was sparked in her early thirties by reading an article in ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION/SCIENCE FACT about the Dora Kent case. It made the whole endeavor seem real. When her husband Helmer had a brush with death she nearly phoned a cryonics organization, but he managed to recover. She stopped thinking about cryonics, but happened to read ENGINES OF CREATION by Eric Drexler and was stunned by the power of the arguments. While Helmer struggled with several more severe medical conditions Marta struggled to persuade him to be cryopreserved until he agreed.

Helmer wanted to see the CI facility before he died. As it turned out he was too ill to be able to travel back to Australia, so he died in Detroit. He died in a rented apartment while under hospice care. He is currently stored with CI and one day she plans to join him.

This gives her a very personal interest in securing the future of cryonics and safeguarding her and her husband’s next life. On the whole she approves of CI's "slow and steady" approach and doesn’t think there is anything wrong with being ultra-cautious when dealing with human lives over an indefinite time span.

Marta can be contacted at martasandberg99@hotmail.com

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Pat Heller is a Certified Public Accountant, though for the most part he deals in Rare Coins and Precious Metals, and is the owner and chief executive officer of Liberty Coin Service, of Lansing, Michigan. He became Treasurer of CI in 1980, and has also served as Vice President of CI. He took office as Vice President in late 1995, following Andrea Foote, and stepped down in 2001, though he continues as Director and Treasurer. Apart from his financial, business, and managerial activities, Pat also has a literary gift and has written and published both fiction and poetry.

Pat has been happily married for the past eight years to his wife, Pam. They have a two-year-old adopted son, and are legal guardians for a fifteen-year-old girl. The Hellers live in Lansing, Michigan.

Pat can be contacted at path@libertycoinservice.com

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Joseph Kowalsky was born and raised in the Detroit area in an Orthodox Jewish home. Both his parents are teachers, a fact he feels encouraged his own lifelong love of learning.

He recalls that he first became aware of cryonics when a seventh grade science teacher brought some cryonics material to class. Joe was hooked: for the next fifteen years Joe kept abreast of the movement, eventually becoming an Associate member of the Immortalist Society. He still remembers attending meetings at Dave and Connie Ettinger's house and speaking to Bob Ettinger, a man he looked up to as a legend.

Following several moves between Akiva Hebrew Day School and public school, Joe graduated and went to Wayne State University on a full merit scholarship. During this time he supported working part time in a Detroit pawnshop, and then became founder and President of a small long distance phone company. He spent one semester as a student at Columbia University, and graduated (magna cum laude) with a BA in economics. He then went back to the University of Michigan Law School, and graduated in 1991, subsequently moving to the Washington, D.C. area, where he became a member of the Maryland and Washington D.C. bar.

Joe spent the next year in Senator Carl Levin's office, working on Paul Tsongas' presidential campaign, and on the Clinton Presidential transition team. Afterwards he went to Australia and New Zealand, doing volunteer work.

Returning again to Michigan, he worked on the Senate Primary Campaign of former Congressman Bill Brodhead, and then on the Senate campaign of Senator Spencer Abraham. With the assistance and encouragement of Congressman Brodhead, he formed his own private practice in 1994 in the Detroit suburb of Lathrup Village, and did a good deal more pro bono work than he would recommend to anyone else. After a few years, he set up the non-profit corporation Tomorrow, Inc., to do pro-bono legal work.

S.R. Luyckx was born in Detroit, Michigan, the fifth of sixth children. His mother worked full time at home and his father owned a small stamping plant in Detroit. Mr. Luyckx graduated from Michigan State University in 1986 with a BA in Logistics. He worked for Kraft Foods in Atlanta, Georgia, and Chicago, Illinois. He returned to Michigan in 1988, where he joined the Chrysler Corporation, and rose to his current position with DaimlerChrysler Financial Services as a Senior Manager.

Mr. Luyckx completed his Masters degree in Corporate Finance at Walsh College in 1989. He enjoys personal investing and tracking corporate financial markets so much that he became a registered representative and health/life insurance agent in 1993. This continues to be his hobby though he's often considered turning professional, and has been generous with his insights and experience as a member of CI's investment committee.

Mr. Luyckx currently lives in Troy, Michigan with his wife and three children. Over the past several years, he's become an avid runner and has completed 13 marathons.

He can be contacted at srl@daimlerchrysler.com

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(Robert) Alan Mole was born in Baltimore in 1943. He earned a BS in Civil Engineering at the University of Denver and an MS (Structural Stress Analysis) at the University of Colorado in 1971.

After a career as an aerospace stress analyst, an engineer who determines whether rockets and satellites will break, he is now semi-retired.

His background in Biology consists of a high school class, plus reading Stryer's Biochemistry and books by Darnel et al and Alberts et al, on molecular cellular biology, to learn of later advances. And reading Scientific American etc., so as to be conversant with current work.

His retirement is not idle, and he has wide interests. He has written about how to terraform Mars, one idea good enough to be quoted by Buzz Aldrin in Encounter with Tiber (page 539.) He has considered ways to get to the stars, and noted that it is prohibitively expensive and impractical to feed people on a forty-year trip, so cold sleep will be a critical technology. This was the origin of his interest in cryonics.

Another interest is linguistics, and he wrote translator program for notebook computers, to allow you to converse with people if you go, say, to Hungary but don't speak Hungarian. Ambiguous words destroy understanding if they are translated wrong, so the program asks you for the meaning every time you use one. ("Charge" as in which meaning? 1. Charge my card. 2. Charge the battery 3. Charge him with murder.) You know what you mean so you type in the correct number and the translation comes out right. This means you have to be there to answer such questions, so it can't translate Web pages letters where the authors are not present. The program works well, but unfortunately people want to translate Web pages and don't want to converse, so it is not a financial success.

Alan Mole is also president of a small society for the reform of English spelling. (Our spelling is a corrupt bane that doubles our illiteracy rate and requires us to spend years learning to read and write, while others spend just two weeks.) The American Literacy Council has about twenty active members, though most of them are very old, and a fair sized endowment. As president for two years he has thought a lot on how to get the most out of this small organization, and how to revive this once-popular cause. This is good preparation for working with Cryonics Institute, another small organization with similar problems in promoting a cause that is not well known.

Alan can be contacted at ramole@aol.com

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John K. Strickland, Jr. was born in New York City during the Second World War. He lived for 30 years in western New York state where he received a B.A. in Anthropology with a minor in Biology from S.U.N.Y. at Buffalo in 1967. He moved to a spot just outside Austin, Texas in 1976, and earned a second B.A. in Computer Science from St. Edwards University in Austin in 1986. He also earned graduate credits in both Anthropology and Biology. He has been a professional programmer / analyst since 1980, and has been employed by the State of Texas in Austin since July, 1989.

John has been an active member of space and science related organizations from 1961 (when he joined the American Rocket Society as a student member) to the present. He created the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award for the National Space Society (NSS) in 1988, (shortly after that author's death), and has managed the award from then to the present. His work with pro-space organizations brought him into contact in 1976 with Keith Henson, a well-known supporter of Cryonics and space settlement, and later K. Eric Drexler, another space activist who later made promoting nano-technology his life’s work. Drexler early pointed out the possibility of future nano-assisted medical repairs which validated the basic concept of cryonics. John has been a supporter of Drexler’s Foresight Institute from the beginning, and notes that the pro-space, pro-technology and pro-life extension groups all have a compatible and "positivist" philosophy. He has a full contract with C.I. His position is one of pragmatism in the service of idealism. In Theodore Roosevelt’s words, this means "keeping your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground".

Since 1976, he has produced articles and op-eds for "The Humanist", "L5 News", "Ad Astra", "Space News", "Solar Power" and for other local and regional publications. His articles have focused primarily on national space policy, access to space, and space solar power. His creation of a slide show and talk in 1990 which explains and promotes Space Solar Power to non-technical audiences led to the publication of his first technical SSP article in 1995, and a second in 1996. He served as the director for science and space programming (about 50 events) at the 1997 LoneStarCon World Science Fiction Convention. He contributed a comprehensive chapter on energy systems in the book, "Solar Power Satellites - a Space Energy System for Earth", edited by Dr. Peter Glaser et al., and published by Wiley-Praxis in 1998. He since has contributed several additional technical papers and presentations to the Mars Society 1999 Convention, the Wireless Power Transmission Conference of 2001, and the World Space Congress in 2002. He is a director of the Sunsat Energy Council and a candidate for an NSS director's seat. He has also been a moderate Delegate to the Texas State Republican Convention in 2000, 2002, AND 2004

John's involvement with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims Of the Paranormal (CSICOP) a national group working for better science coverage and less pseudo-science in the mass media, has given him a unique debunker's perspective in dealing with energy vs. environment and other controversial issues. In 1981 he was one of 3 founders of the Protect Lake Travis Association of Austin, Texas, and still serves on its board of directors. As well, John is a Director of the National Space Society. He has been a member of the National Speleological Society since 1964 and a member of the Heart of Texas Orchid Society since 1976. He also enjoys reading History, Science Fiction and Science.

John can be reached at jkstrick@io.com

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Jordan Sparks

It's long been known that there's a connection between mathematics and music; so there's no surprise that a future mathematician and physicist like Robert Ettinger should have had a musical background. The grandnephew of a conductor of the St. Petersburg opera, and a nephew (by marriage) of the great jazz man Pee Wee Russell, Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger was born on December 4, 1918 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

As a youngster, he was a fan of what was then called 'scientifiction'. A story in one of these early science fiction magazines from the early 30's, 'The Jameson Satellite' by Neil R. Jones, involved an eccentric millionaire who sent his body into orbit after death, frozen in the cold and vacuum of space, only to be revived millions of years later by alien mechanical men who placed him in an immortal robot body like themselves, free to travel the stars.

Jones' story is often cited as the seed that first got Robert Ettinger thinking about the idea that was to become his life's work -- and, perhaps, re-shape human history.

Mortality was a more prominent theme than immortality in those days. As World War Two began, Robert Ettinger became a second lieutenant infantryman in the United States Army, 1st Division, H Company, 18th Infantry Regiment, and fought in Europe. Severely wounded in battle in Germany, he received the Purple Heart and spent several years after the war recovering in an Army hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Ettinger used the time not only to recuperate, but also to read and think. He was particularly struck by work by the famous French biologist Dr. Jean Rostand. Rostand had frozen frog sperm to the point where all biological activity and decay had ceased -- and successfully revived it several days later. He even speculated that perhaps someday the aged and infirm might be similarly treated and revived.

And in the course of that and other reading at Battle Creek, Robert Ettinger began to write -- a short story published in March 1948 in Startling Stories called "The Penultimate Trump" in which a man is frozen and revived centuries in the future.

Ettinger's interest in science fiction was not as strong as his interest in science fact, however. Prior to enlisting, Ettinger had spent one semester at the University of Michigan. Upon leaving his hospital bed, he enrolled at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he earned a BA and MA in physics, and then a second MA in mathematics.

He became an instructor at Wayne State, teaching physics and mathematics, and then turned down the offer of an Assistant Professorship at Wayne to teach at Highland Park Community College in Michigan. It was an intellectually stimulating and pleasant life, made happier by the birth of his son David in 1951 and his daughter Shelley in 1954.

Nonetheless he continued to critically examine and explore the ideas in his earlier story, and around 1960 he began pulling together all the ideas he'd been thinking about for the last several years about a new area of science -- which would come to be called 'cryonics'.

In 1962 he sat down and put his ideas into the form of a book, called The Prospect Of Immortality, which he published privately and sent to friends and scientists. It attracted so much attention that Doubleday publishers sent a copy to Isaac Asimov to see if the ideas had any validity. Asimov gave it a clean scientific bill of health, and Doubleday published it in 1964.

At which point, as science author Ed Regis wrote, "The Prospect Of Immortality ultimately went through nine languages and four editions and became the bible of the cryonics movement".

Robert Ettinger became a media celebrity, discussed in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, Paris Match, Der Speigel, Christian Century, dozens of other periodicals. He appeared on television with David Frost, Johnny Carson, Steve Allen, and others, and spoke on radio shows coast to coast.

Ettinger's work was read by, and galvanized, the leaders of what soon came to be the cryonics movement. Saul Kent of 21st Century Medicine (to take only one example) recalls reading Ettinger's book in June of 1964, and was inspired to help found (with the help of Curtis Henderson and others) the Cryonics Society of New York a year later, and to freeze CSNY's first patient a few years after that.

Cryonics had begun as Robert Ettinger's idea. It had become a reality.

The movement progressed, and the scientific evidence mounted, hand in hand. In January 1967 retired psychology professor named Dr James Bedford became the first human being to be placed in cryonic suspension, and later that year Robert Ettinger and his friends and admirers and colleagues came together to form the Cryonics Society of Michigan for purposes of research and education and to discuss Ettinger's ideas on saving and extending human life.

CSM eventually changed its name to the Cryonics Association, and finally became the Immortalist Society (IS), taking it's name after Robert Ettinger's book.

But IS members, dissatisfied with the policies and procedures of the existing cryonics service organizations, came together in 1976 to form a new and separate nonprofit corporation, the Cryonics Institute (CI), in order to provide the best possible cryonics services to its members. Robert Ettinger was elected President of both organizations, posts he occupied till 2003.

During the turbulent period of the late sixties and early seventies, however, Robert Ettinger continued to stretch the intellectual parameters of his time, producing his second book, Man Into Superman, one of the seminal texts in what some people are now calling the transhumanist movement.

Its thesis was that advancing scientific and technological change would eventually produce essential and radical changes in humanity and society itself, as cloning and gene therapy have confirmed, and explored its implications.

All-too-human events continued to take place Robert Ettinger's life, however. In 1977 His mother, Rhea Ettinger, was cryopreserved as a patient at the CI facilities, and in 1987, his first wife Elaine, also became a patient.

The 1980's were marked by tremendously encouraging progress in cryonics, most notably the development of nanotechnology. In 1984, Dr K. Eric Drexler wrote the science classic Engines Of Creation, outlining a technological scenario for reviving patients currently in cryonics suspension by using nanoscale assembler devices, an approach that soon began winning adherents among wide numbers of the mainstream scientific community.

And Dr. Drexler, who has called The Prospect Of Immortality one the most influential books of the century, was not modest in giving credit where credit is due. He wrote, "Ettinger had the idea that something like assemblers would be possible the basic idea of molecular repair was there, and it was central to the cryonics idea."

Research progressed on other fronts as well. Experiments with even large adult mammals demonstrated that living creatures could be cooled to the point of exhibiting no signs of life for increasingly extended periods of time, yet revived.

By the late Eighties, techniques such as freezing and reviving human embryos had become commonplace.

And by the Nineties, the Internet had given scientists working on the problem of revival, and cryonics organizations and activists eager to get the word out, a world-spanning medium for information exchange.

In 1988, Ettinger married Mae Junod, and they moved from Michigan to Scottsdale, Arizona, for the warmer climate, until Mae became ill and was cryopreserved early in 2001.

Robert Ettinger then returned to Michigan and the Cryonics Institute, where he served further as President until September 2003. He retired as CI Vice-President in December 2005, and retired as a CI Director in September 2006. As always, however, is advice is sought and respected. His and CI's continuing goal being, to improve cryopreservation procedures in line with CI's intention of offering members the benefits of all types of procedures as they become available, at the lowest cost possible for each.

Bob remains a frequent contributor to LONG LIFE magazine (formally known as The Immortalist), and to various discussion groups. For relaxation he likes swimming and going on walks with his dog Mugsy. And, like his forebears, he still likes a good melody, from Tchaikovsky to barbershop quartets.

Mostly, he concentrates on helping CI, and on continuing to learn and to explore the world intellectually. His conclusions so far, the classic books, The Prospect Of Immortality and Man Into Superman, may be downloaded complete and free of charge from our website. His most recent book, entitled YOUNIVERSE, can be obtained by special order from the Immortalist Society

Robert Ettinger can be contacted at ettinger@aol.com

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