Elizabeth Rauscher
Encyclopedia
Elizabeth A. Rauscher is an American physicist
and parapsychologist. She is a former researcher with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
, the Stanford Research Institute, and NASA
.
In 1975 Rauscher co-founded the Berkeley Fundamental Fysiks Group
, an informal group of physicists who met weekly to discuss quantum mysticism
and the philosophy of quantum physics. David Kaiser
writes that it was in large measure thanks to this group that certain ideas were nurtured—ideas unpopular at the time with the mainstream scientific establishment—which now form the basis of quantum information science
.
She is known for her interest in psychic healing and faith healing
.
She married and had a son, and when she became their sole provider took a job as a staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a weapons laboratory near Berkeley. When her son was old enough, she returned to Berkeley to begin her PhD under Glenn Seaborg, the nuclear chemist. She continued to work at Livermore and became the chair of the Livermore Philosophy Group, offering classes on the relationship between science and society at Berkeley, and later at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. She completed her PhD in 1978 on "Coupled Channel Alpha Decay Theory for Even and Odd-Mass Light and Heavy Nuclei."
She later held positions as professor of physics and general science at John F. Kennedy University
, 1978–1984; research consultant to NASA
, 1983–1985; and professor and graduate student adviser in the department of physics at the University of Nevada, Reno
, 1990–1998.
. The group included Fritjof Capra
, John Clauser
, Nick Herbert
, Jack Sarfatti
, Henry Stapp
, and Fred Alan Wolf
. According to Kaiser, Rauscher and Weissman started the meetings in a fit of pique and frustration, saddened by the absence of a philosophical perspective in their physics classes.
Kaiser describes how Rauscher's personal interests within the group lay with remote viewing
, precognition
, psychokinesis
, remote healing, and ghost
s. Jeffrey John Kripal writes that Rauscher broadened the group to included non-physicists, and in the late 1970s and early 1980s the group's members met annually at the Esalen Institute
to continue their exchange of ideas, exerting a major influence on alternative religious thought in the United States.
, owned by Richard J. Reynolds III, grandson of R. J. Reynolds, the tobacco magnate. Until his death in 1994, Reynolds allowed them to live there to conduct research into the effects of electromagnetic fields on brain waves. A third scientist, physician Andrija Puharich
, had been living and conducting research on the estate since 1980. After Reynolds' death, the scientists said he had invited them to remain there as long as they wanted, but they were unable to produce a written agreement, and were required by a court to leave.
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
and parapsychologist. She is a former researcher with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...
, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...
, the Stanford Research Institute, and NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
.
In 1975 Rauscher co-founded the Berkeley Fundamental Fysiks Group
Fundamental Fysiks Group
The Fundamental Fysiks Group was founded in San Francisco in May 1975 by two physicists, Elizabeth Rauscher and George Weissmann, at the time both graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. The group held informal discussions on Friday afternoons to explore the philosophical...
, an informal group of physicists who met weekly to discuss quantum mysticism
Quantum mysticism
Quantum mysticism is a term that has been used to refer to a set of metaphysical beliefs and associated practices that seek to relate consciousness, intelligence or mystical world-views to the ideas of quantum mechanics and its interpretations...
and the philosophy of quantum physics. David Kaiser
David Kaiser
David Kaiser is an American physicist and historian of science. He is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and department head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's program in Science, Technology, and Society...
writes that it was in large measure thanks to this group that certain ideas were nurtured—ideas unpopular at the time with the mainstream scientific establishment—which now form the basis of quantum information science
Quantum information science
Quantum information science is an area of study based on the idea that information science depends on quantum effects in physics. It includes theoretical issues in computational models as well as more experimental topics in quantum physics including what can and cannot be done with quantum...
.
She is known for her interest in psychic healing and faith healing
Faith healing
Faith healing is healing through spiritual means. The healing of a person is brought about by religious faith through prayer and/or rituals that, according to adherents, stimulate a divine presence and power toward correcting disease and disability. Belief in divine intervention in illness or...
.
Education and career
In How the Hippies Saved Physics (2011), Kaiser writes that Rauscher had always been interested in science, and as a child had designed and built her own telescopes. Raised near Berkeley, she started hanging around the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory when she was in high school. She enrolled at Berkeley for her first degree, and published her first article, on nuclear fusion, while still an undergraduate. Kaiser writes that she was the only woman in her class; at that time women in America earned only five and two percent of physics undergraduate degrees and PhDs respectively. He writes that she coped with it by wearing tweedy dresses and keeping her hair short, though she experienced some intimidation. She obtained her masters in nuclear physics in 1965.She married and had a son, and when she became their sole provider took a job as a staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a weapons laboratory near Berkeley. When her son was old enough, she returned to Berkeley to begin her PhD under Glenn Seaborg, the nuclear chemist. She continued to work at Livermore and became the chair of the Livermore Philosophy Group, offering classes on the relationship between science and society at Berkeley, and later at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. She completed her PhD in 1978 on "Coupled Channel Alpha Decay Theory for Even and Odd-Mass Light and Heavy Nuclei."
She later held positions as professor of physics and general science at John F. Kennedy University
John F. Kennedy University
John F. Kennedy University is a nonprofit, private university located in Pleasant Hill, California, with satellite campuses in Campbell, Berkeley, and Costa Mesa. It was founded in 1964 to focus on providing continuing opportunities for non-traditional higher education. Enrollment is approximately...
, 1978–1984; research consultant to NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
, 1983–1985; and professor and graduate student adviser in the department of physics at the University of Nevada, Reno
University of Nevada, Reno
The University of Nevada, Reno , is a teaching and research university established in 1874 and located in Reno, Nevada, USA...
, 1990–1998.
Fundamental Fysiks Group
At Berkeley in May 1975, she and George Weissmann co-founded the Fundamental Fysiks Group, an informal group of physicists who met for Friday afternoon brainstorming sessions to explore the philosophical problems posed by quantum physics, particularly the relationship between physics and consciousnessConsciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
. The group included Fritjof Capra
Fritjof Capra
Fritjof Capra is an Austrian-born American physicist. He is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, and is on the faculty of Schumacher College....
, John Clauser
John Clauser
John Francis Clauser is an American theoretical and experimental physicist known for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, in particular the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality....
, Nick Herbert
Nick Herbert (physicist)
Nick Herbert is an American physicist and author, best known for his book Quantum Reality.Herbert studied Engineering Physics at the Ohio State University, graduating in 1959. He received a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 1967 for work on nuclear scattering experiments...
, Jack Sarfatti
Jack Sarfatti
Jack Sarfatti is an American theoretical physicist specializing in the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness...
, Henry Stapp
Henry Stapp
Henry Stapp is an American physicist, well-known for his work in quantum mechanics.-Biography:Stapp received his PhD in particle physics at the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Nobel Laureates Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain...
, and Fred Alan Wolf
Fred Alan Wolf
Fred Alan Wolf is an American theoretical physicist specializing in quantum physics and the relationship between physics and consciousness. He is a former physics professor at San Diego State University, and more recently has helped to popularize science on the Discovery Channel...
. According to Kaiser, Rauscher and Weissman started the meetings in a fit of pique and frustration, saddened by the absence of a philosophical perspective in their physics classes.
Kaiser describes how Rauscher's personal interests within the group lay with remote viewing
Remote viewing
Remote viewing is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means, in particular, extra-sensory perception or "sensing with mind"...
, precognition
Precognition
In parapsychology, precognition , also called future sight, and second sight, is a type of extrasensory perception that would involve the acquisition or effect of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and normally acquired sense-based information or laws of physics...
, psychokinesis
Psychokinesis
The term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term...
, remote healing, and ghost
Ghost
In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...
s. Jeffrey John Kripal writes that Rauscher broadened the group to included non-physicists, and in the late 1970s and early 1980s the group's members met annually at the Esalen Institute
Esalen Institute
Esalen Institute is a residential community and retreat in Big Sur, California, which focuses upon humanistic alternative education. Esalen is a nonprofit organization devoted to activites such as meditation, massage, Gestalt, yoga, psychology, ecology, and spirituality...
to continue their exchange of ideas, exerting a major influence on alternative religious thought in the United States.
Later research
In the 1990s, Rauscher and her husband—William van Bise, an engineer—moved to an estate in Devotion, North CarolinaDevotion, North Carolina
Devotion is a small unincorporated community in the Bryan Township of western Surry County, North Carolina. Fairly isolated, Devotion is on the Mitchell River and is the site of a large family estate owned by members of the R. J. Reynolds family .-References:...
, owned by Richard J. Reynolds III, grandson of R. J. Reynolds, the tobacco magnate. Until his death in 1994, Reynolds allowed them to live there to conduct research into the effects of electromagnetic fields on brain waves. A third scientist, physician Andrija Puharich
Andrija Puharich
Andrija Puharich, MD original name is Henry K. Puharich, . He was an Army officer in the early 1950s. During that time, he was in and out of Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories and Camp Detrick, meeting with various high-ranking officers and officials, primarily from the Pentagon, CIA, and Naval...
, had been living and conducting research on the estate since 1980. After Reynolds' death, the scientists said he had invited them to remain there as long as they wanted, but they were unable to produce a written agreement, and were required by a court to leave.
Selected works
- Amoroso, Richard L. and Elizabeth A. Rauscher. "Complex Dimensional Geometries and Measurement". Unified Theories. Eds. Richard L. Amoroso, István Dienes, and Csaba Varga. Palo Alto: Noetic PressNoetic Advanced Studies InstituteThe Noetic Advanced Studies Institute founded in 1974 in Palo Alto, CA is an independent nonprofit research fellowship with current offices located in Oakland, California near UC Berkeley and in Recife, Brazil where a new medical college based on principles related to Saude Quantico is being...
(2008). ISBN 9780967868776 - Amoroso, Richard L. and Elizabeth A. Rauscher. The Holographic Anthropic Multiverse: Formalizing the Complex Geometry of Reality. Hackensack: World ScientificWorld ScientificWorld Scientific Publishing is a publisher of scientific, technical, and medical books and journals. The company was founded in 1981 and now employs more than 200 staff at its headquarters in Singapore, with offices worldwide in New Jersey, California, London, New Delhi, Tianjin, Sydney, Hong...
(2009). ISBN 9789812839305 - Amoroso, Richard L. and Elizabeth A. Rauscher. Orbiting the Moons of Pluto: Complex Solutions to the Einstein, Maxwell, Schrödinger and Dirac Equations. Hackensack: World Scientific (2011). ISBN 9789814324243
- Amoroso, Richard L. and Elizabeth A. Rauscher. "The Physical Implications of Multidimensional Geometries and Measurement". International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems. 2006.
- Dea, Y. Jack, Wolfgang-M. Boerner, Elizabeth A. Rauscher and William Van Bise. "Observations of ELF (extremely low frequency) signatures arising from space vehicle disturbances of the ionosphere". Canadian Journal of Physics. 69.8–9 (1991): 91–151.
- Haramein, N. and Rauscher, E.A. "The origin of spin: A consideration of torque and coriolis forces in Einstein’s field equations and Grand Unification Theory", in R. L. Amoroso, B. Lehnert & J-P Vigier (eds.) Beyond The Standard Model: Searching For Unity In Physics. The Noetic Press. 2005, pp. 153–168.
- Rauscher, Elizabeth A. "Electron interactions and quantum plasma physics." Journal of Plasma Physics. 2. (1968): 517–541.
- Rauscher, Elizabeth A. Electromagnetic Phenomena in Complex Geometries and Nonlinear Phenomena, Non-Hertzian Waves and Magnetic Monopoles. Breckenridge: Tesla Book Company (1983). ISBN 0960353690
- Rauscher, Elizabeth A. "Forward". Electrogravitics systems: reports on a new propulsion methodology. Ed. Thomas Valone. Beltsville: Integrity Research Institute (1994). ISBN 0964107007
- Rauscher, Elizabeth A. "Psychokinetic interaction with laboratory prepared materials: A prototype experimental design." PSI Research. 3.3–4 (1984): 26–41.
Further reading
- Personal website, accessed August 19, 2011.
- "Twenty-fifth reunion of the Fundamental Physics Group", quantumtantra.com, accessed August 18, 2011.
- "How the Hippies Saved Physics (Excerpt)", Scientific American, June 27, 2011.
- Gusterson, Hugh. "Physics: Quantum outsiders", Nature, 476, 278–279, August 18, 2011.
- Johnson, George. "What Physics Owes the Counterculture", The New York Times, June 17, 2011.
- Wisnioski, Matthew. "Let's Be Fysiksists Again", Science, vol 332, issue 6037, 24 June, 2011, pp. 1504–1505.