Immanuel Velikovsky

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Lore & Background

Immanuel Velikovsky was born in 1895 to a prosperous Jewish family in Vitebsk, Russian Empire (now in Belarus). He learned several languages as a child and was sent to study at the Medvednikov Gymnasium in Moscow, where he performed well in Russian language and mathematics, graduating with a gold medal in 1913. He traveled in Europe and visited Palestine before briefly studying medicine at Montpellier in France and taking premedical courses at the University of Edinburgh. He returned to Russia before World War I, enrolled in the University of Moscow, and received a medical degree in 1921. Upon taking his degree, he left Russia for Berlin. With financial support from his father, he edited and published two volumes of scientific papers translated into Hebrew, titled *Scripta Universitatis Atque Bibliothecae Hierosolymitanarum*, enlisting Albert Einstein to prepare the volume on mathematics and physics. In 1923, he married Elisheva Kramer, a violinist and later sculptor. From 1924 to 1939, he lived in Palestine, practicing medicine in general practice, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, which he had studied under Sigmund Freud's pupil Wilhelm Stekel in Vienna. During this time, he had about a dozen papers published in medical and psychoanalytic journals, including in Freud's *Imago*, with a precocious analysis of Freud's own dreams.

Reader's Guide

Immanuel Velikovsky's significance lies in the intense controversy his work generated, often called 'the Velikovsky affair.' In 1939, he traveled with his family to New York City, intending to research his book *Oedipus and Akhenaton*, inspired by Freud's *Moses and Monotheism*. Within weeks, World War II began, and he shifted to developing his radical catastrophist cosmology and revised chronology. He privately published two *Scripta Academica* pamphlets in 1945: *Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History* and *Cosmos Without Gravitation*, mailing copies to academic libraries and scientists, including Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley in 1947. In 1950, after eight publishing houses rejected the *Worlds in Collision* manuscript, it was published by Macmillan. Even before its appearance, the book was enveloped by furious controversy after *Harper's Magazine* and *Reader's Digest* published highly positive features. Shapley, familiar with Velikovsky's claims through the pamphlet, threatened to organize a textbook boycott of Macmillan, and within two months the book was transferred to Doubleday, by then a U.S. bestseller. In 1952, Doubleday published *Ages in Chaos*, followed by *Earth in Upheaval* in 1955. For most of the 1950s and early 1960s, Velikovsky was *persona non grata* on college and university campuses, but later he began to receive more requests to speak, lecturing to record crowds at universities across North America. In 1972, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired a one-hour television special, followed by a thirty-minute BBC documentary in 1973. During the 1970s, he devoted time to rebutting critics and continued touring North America and Europe. He died in 1979. His archive was donated to Princeton University Library in 2005 by his daughter Ruth Sharon.

Did You Know?

• Velikovsky enlisted Albert Einstein to prepare a volume on mathematics and physics for his Hebrew translation project *Scripta Universitatis Atque Bibliothecae Hierosolymitanarum*.
• He published a precocious analysis of Sigmund Freud's own dreams in Freud's journal *Imago*.
• After eight publishing houses rejected *Worlds in Collision*, it was published by Macmillan in 1950 and became a U.S. bestseller after being transferred to Doubleday.
• Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley threatened to organize a textbook boycott of Macmillan over the publication of *Worlds in Collision*.
• Velikovsky's archive was donated to Princeton University Library in 2005 by his daughter Ruth Sharon.