Max Planck
(Nobel Prize for Physics)

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was one of the most important German physicists of the late 19th and early 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918; he is considered to be the founder of quantum theory.

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. As quoted in The Observer (25 January 1931)

As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.

Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797)

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Wolfgang Pauli
(Nobel Prize for Physics)

Wolfgang Pauli, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945, was one of the pioneers of quantum physics. He believed in psychokinesis - that a person could influence material objects by means unknown to mainstream science. He believed he manifested this power by damaging experimental equipment. This phenomenon was called the Pauli Effect. Pauli also believed in synchronicity and that parapsychology was not pseudo-science but worthy of study. He believed that some psychic contents survive personal ego and can effect other living people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_effect

Since the 20th century, the work of physics research has been divided between theorists and experimentalists (see scientific method). Only a few physicists, such as Enrico Fermi, have been successful in both roles. Lacking an aptitude or interest in experimental work, many theorists have earned a reputation for accidentally breaking experimental equipment. Pauli was exceptional in this regard: it was said that he was such a good theorist that any experiments would self-destruct simply because he was in the vicinity. For fear of the Pauli effect, the experimental physicist Otto Stern banned Pauli from his laboratory in Hamburg despite their friendship.[1]

...

The Pauli effect, if it were real, would be classified as a "macro-psychokinetic" phenomenon. Wolfgang Pauli was convinced that the effect named after him was real.[3] As Pauli considered parapsychology worthy of serious investigation, this would fit with his thinking; to this end, Pauli corresponded with Hans Bender and Carl Jung on the concept of Synchronicity.

Wikiquote gives this quote from Pauli that reveals he believed psychic contents survive personal ego and can effect other living people:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Pauli

Although I have no objection to accepting the existence of relatively constant psychic contents that survive personal ego, it must always be born in mind that we have no way of knowing what these contents are actually like "as such." All we can observe is their effect on other living people, whose spiritual level and whose personal unconscious crucially influence the way these contents actually manifest themselves.

"Modern Examples of Background Physics" ["Moderne Beispiele zur Hintergrundsphysik"] (1948) as translated by David Roscoe in Atom and Archetype (1992) edited by Carl Alfred Meier

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Erwin Schrödinger
(Nobel Prize for Physics)

Erwin Schrödinger received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. He believed consciousness was not produced by the brain and could not be explained in physical terms.

Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger ( 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961) was an Austrian born physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. In 1935 he proposed the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger

Schrödinger wrote:

"Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/325387

Other quotes by Schrödinger:

The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any physical system. And it might be better to reserve the term "subject" for the observing mind. ... For the subject, if anything, is the thing that senses and thinks. Sensations and thoughts do not belong to the "world of energy."

...

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.

...

There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger

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Brian D. Josephson
(Nobel Prize for Physics)

Brian David Josephson (born Cardiff, Wales, UK, 4 January 1940) is a British physicist whose discovery of the Josephson effect ... won him the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics ... [H]e is the head of the mind-matter unification project in the Theory of Condensed Matter research group.

...

Josephson's is one of the more well-known scientists who believe that parapsychological phenomena may be real...

"What are the implications for science of the fact that psychic functioning appears to be a real effect? These phenomena seem mysterious, but no more mysterious perhaps than strange phenomena of the past which science has now happily incorporated within its scope."

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Charles Robert Richet
(Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine)

Charles Robert Richet: 1850-1925. Pioneer psychical researcher, honored professor of physiology at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.
...

He conducted experiments with a number of different mediums including Franek Kluski, Jan Guzyk, and Stephen Ossowiecki, both in Paris and Warsaw.

...

"The more I reflect and weigh in my mind these materializations, hauntings, marvelous lucidity, apports, xenoglossie, apparitions and, above all, premonitions, the more I am persuaded that we know absolutely nothing of the universe which surrounds us. We live in a sort of dream and have not yet understood anything of the agitations and tumults of this dream."

Thirty Years of Psychical Research

http://survivalebooks.org/#Thirty Years of Psychical Research

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John William Strutt
(Nobel Prize for Physics)

John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was an English physicist who (with William Ramsay) discovered the element argon, an achievement that earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904. He also discovered the phenomenon now called Rayleigh scattering and predicted the existence of the surface waves now known as Rayleigh waves.

...[He] was president of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), London, 1919. ... Lord Rayleigh became interested in psychical research after reading about the investigations of his colleague Sir William Crookes.

... "I have seen enough to convince me that those are wrong who wish to prevent investigation by casting ridicule on those who may feel inclined to engage in it." ...

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Marie Curie
(Nobel Prize for Physics and Nobel Prize for Chemistry)

Marie Curie was the first woman awarded a Nobel prize and she was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes.

According to Wikipedia...

Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity (a term coined by her[2]), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. It was also under her personal direction that the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms (cancers), using radioactive isotopes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie

According to the "Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia"...

The Institut Général Psychologique of Paris carried on extensive experiments in 43 sittings from 1905 to 1907. Pierre and Marie Curie were among the investigators. ... The Curies regarded mediumistic séances as "scientific experiments" and took detailed notes. According to historian Anna Hurwic, they thought it possible to discover in spiritualism the source of an unknown energy that would reveal the secret of radioactivity.[12]
http://www.answers.com/topic/eusapia-palladino

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Pierre Curie
(Nobel Prize for Physics)

Pierre Curie (15 May 1859 – 19 April 1906) was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity, and Nobel laureate. In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Maria Sklodowska-Curie, and Henri Becquerel, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Curie

On July 24, 1905, Pierre Curie reported to his friend Gouy: "We have had a series of séances with Eusapia Palladino at the [Society for Psychical Research]."

It was very interesting, and really the phenomena that we saw appeared inexplicable as trickery—tables raised from all four legs, movement of objects from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you, luminous apparitions. All in a [setting] prepared by us with a small number of spectators all known to us and without a possible accomplice. The only trick possible is that which could result from an extraordinary facility of the medium as a magician. But how do you explain the phenomena when one is holding her hands and feet and when the light is sufficient so that one can see everything that happens?[13]

http://www.answers.com/topic/eusapia-palladino

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David Bohm

David Bohm was one of the best quantum physicists of all time and one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century (wikipedia).

David Joseph Bohm FRS[1] (20 December 1917 – 27 October 1992) was an American-born British quantum physicist who contributed to theoretical physics, philosophy of mind, neuropsychology. David Bohm is widely considered to be one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century.[2]

...

David Bohm was widely considered one of the best quantum physicists of all time.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm

In the article, David Bohm and Jiddo Krishnamurti which appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer, July 2000, Martin Garner wrote that Bohm was favorably impressed with parapsychology including Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields. Bohm took Uri Geller's psychic phenomena seriously and carried with him a key bent by Geller. Bohm believed in panpsychicsm, in one interview he said, "Even the electron is informed with a certain level of mind,"

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Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace discovered the theory of natural selection at the same time Charles Darwin did. This theory was based on extensive observations of the natural world. Wallace was originally a skeptic about the evidence of mediumistic phenomena but his great powers of observation, the same ones which led him to discover the theory of natural selection, also forced him to accept mediumistic phenomena as genuinely paranormal.

The Wikipedia article on Wallace gives a brief biography of his life and work:

Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He is best known for independently proposing a theory of natural selection which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own theory. ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace

... was a confirmed philosophical sceptic, a materialist so thorough that before he got acquainted with the facts of spiritualism there was no place in his mind for the conception of spiritual existence, or for any agencies in the universe other than matter and force. The facts beat him. To quote his own words from his preface to On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism:

"They compelled me to accept them, as facts, long before I could accept the spiritual explanation of them: there was at that time 'no place in my fabric of thought into which it could be fitted.' (Argument of Dr. Carpenter). By slow degrees a place was made."

He was led to believe (1) in the existence of a number of preterhuman intelligences of various grades; (2) that some of these intelligences, although usually invisible and intangible to us, can and do act on matter, and do influence our minds.

(From the article on Alfred Russel Wallace on the International Survivalists Society web site.)

Many skeptics believe that natural selection gives sufficient explanation of the origin of life and humankind so that belief in supernatural forces is unwarranted. Clearly this is a fallacy if one of the discovers of natural selection believed in supernatural intelligences.

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Sir William Crookes

Sir William Crookes: 1832-1919. Discoverer of the element thallium. Elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1863. Royal Gold Medal 1875, Davy Medal 1888, Sir Joseph Copley Medal 1904, knighted in 1897, Order of Merit 1910. Invented the cathode-ray tube.

Crookes first began his investigations into 'psychic' phenomena in 1869 as a hostile doubter. In his article, 'Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science' he declared:

"The increased employment of scientific methods will produce a race of observers who will drive the worthless residuum of spiritualism hence into the unknown limbo of magic and necromancy."

Crookes' experiments with Daniel D. Home demonstrated the existence of a 'psychic force' wholly ignored by science.

Crookes stated:

"Of all persons endowed with a powerful development of this Psychic Force, Mr. Daniel Dunglas Home is the most remarkable and it is mainly owing to the many opportunities I have had of carrying on my investigation in his presence that I am enabled to affirm so conclusively the existence of this force."

• Researches into the Phenomena of Spiritualism by Sir William Crookes

Sir Robert Boyle

Sir Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was one of the most brilliant scientists of all time. In the book "Extraordinary Knowing", Elizabeth Mayer explains that Boyle was the father of modern chemistry, the founder of the Royal Society of London, and the author of Boyle's Law.

Mayer also explains that Boyle investigated the spiritual healer Valentine Greatrakes. At first Boyle was skeptical, but his investigations convinced him of the genuineness of Greatrakes abilities. Boyle's lab notebooks from 1666 contain notes on his observations.

This day a woman came among other Patients to be curd of a great thicknesse of hearing she complaind of, & he haveing put his fingers in her ears, and (as I remember) a litle strookd them, she complaind no more of her deafnesse, but a great pain that resided in the fore part of her Head, where haveing strookd her, he presently dislodgd the pain, & after haveing chasd if from place to place about her Head, as she informd us, at length she told us that both her pain & the deafnesse were gone, & when I askd her how long she had [d] bin soe thick of hearing, she innocently answerd me ever since the birth of her first child, & when I smileing demaunded how it was since she was brought in Bed of her first child, she said about a year & a quarter, and affirmeing her self to be recoverd, as she seemd to the by-standers to be, she went away joyfull.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/boyle/workdiaries/WD26Clean.html

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

From the article on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at the International Survivalists Society web site:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1859-1930. . . . In 1881 he obtained his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degree. . . . As regards survival, in 1902 when he first met Sir Oliver Lodge he had not arrived at a definite conclusion. But Myers' Human Personality made a deep impression on his mind. . . .

Later . . .

http://www.spiritwritings.com/arthurconandoyle.html

Until his death Doyle remained convinced that life continued after death, because of ongoing communications from deceased family members who assured him that they lived in the spirit world. These communications remained the "definite demonstration" that he had sought since his days at the University of Edinburgh.

One would expect that a trained doctor and surgeon and the creator of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes would not be taken in by fraudulent mediums and would reach reasonable conclusions from the evidence.

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Richard Hodgson

Richard Hodgson 1855-1905 . . . Professor of legal studies at Cambridge University. . . . His legal training and personal attainments made him specially qualified for the detection of fraud. . . . The change in his general attitude towards the phenomenal side of 'spiritualism' was brought about very slowly and after desperate resistance by his unparalleled opportunities of investigation with the mediumship of Mrs. Piper for a period of fifteen years.

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Gary Schwartz

Psychic Researcher: Gary Schwartz Ph.D.

From http://veritas.arizona.edu/investigators.htm

GARY E. SCHWARTZ, Ph.D., Director of the VERITAS Research Program, is a professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery at the University of Arizona and director of its Human Energy Systems Laboratory and its Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard University, he served as a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Yale University, director of the Yale Psychophysiology Center, and co-director of the Yale Behavioral Medicine Clinic. Dr. Schwartz has published more than four hundred scientific papers, edited eleven academic books, is the co-author of The Living Energy Universe, and is the author of The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death and The Truth About Medium.

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Neville Whymant

http://www.freewebs.com/psilib/PsychicAdventuresWhymant.txt

At the end of March, 1926, I first arrived in New York, having left England a few days before. Previously I had spent several years in the Far East engaged in ethnologic research, an occupation which necessitated my speaking several Oriental languages daily. This acquaintance with a variety of tongues was the direct cause of my being drawn into the series of strange happenings which form the burden of this tale.

. . .

As the [spirit] voice went on I realized that the style of Chinese used was identical with that of the Chinese Classics, edited by Confucius two thousand five hundred years ago. Only among the scholars of Archaic Chinese could one now hear that accent and style, and then only when they intoned some passage from the ancient books. In other words, the Chinese to which we were now listening was as dead colloquially as Sanskrit or Latin, and had been so for even a greater length of time. If this was a hoax, it was a particularly clever one, far beyond the scope of any of the sinologues now living.

. . .

I asked if "the Master" would explain to me the meaning of one of these long-obscure odes.

. . .

In declaiming the ode the voice had put a new construction on the verses and made the whole thing hang together as a normal poem. It was, I was told, a psychic poem, and it was well known that the Chinese recognized psychic literature as a thing apart from ordinary literary compositions. "Read in this way," the voice had said, "does not its meaning become plain?

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More Eminent Researchers

A more complete list of eminent researchers can be found at:
http://www.aspsi.org/feat/life_after/tymn/testimonials.htm

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Books by Eminent Researchers

The chapter E-Libraries has links to on line libraries of free e-books on the subject of survival after death.

Many books and articles by the professionals listed on
http://www.aspsi.org/feat/life_after/tymn/testimonials.htm are available free on line. Here is a list of some of them

Judge John W. Edmonds
Spiritual Tracts by (100+ page excerpt)
http://www.spiritwritings.com/SpiritualismEdmonds.pdf

Allan Kardec, Esq.

• The Spirits' Book
  http://www.spiritwritings.com/kardecspiritstoc.html
• The Mediums' Book
  http://www.spiritwritings.com/kardecmediumstoc.html

Sir William Crookes

• Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism

The Rev. William Stainton Moses

• Spirit Teachings
  http://meilach.com/spiritual/books/st/sptext.zip
• More Spirit Teachings
  http://www.meilach.com/spiritual/books/morest/mspteach.htm

Sir William Barrett

• Death-Bed Visions

Frederic W. H. Myers, Esq.
Human Personality Vol II
http://web.archive.org/web/20080311075436/http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/myers/intro.htm

Sir Oliver Lodge

• Survival of Man
• Raymond
• Why I Believe in Personal Immortality

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• History Of Spiritualism Vol I
  http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301051.txt
• History Of Spiritualism Vol II
  http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301061.txt
• More books by Arthur Conan Doyle can be found here:
  http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterD

Dr. James H. Hyslop

• Psychical Research and Survival
• The Borderland

Dr. William James

• On Mediumship

Dr. Charles Richet

• Thirty Years of Psychical Research
• Mediums

Dr. Carl A. Wickland

• Thirty Years Among the Dead
  http://www.spiritwritings.com/ThirtyYearsAmongTheDead.html
• Gateway of Understanding
  http://www.spiritwritings.com/GatewayOfUnderstanding.pdf

Edward C. Randall, Esq.

• The Dead Have Never Died
  http://survivalebooks.org/#The Dead Have Never Died
• Frontiers of the Afterlife
  http://survivalebooks.org/#Frontiers of the Afterlife

Dr. Isaac K. Funk
The Psychic Riddle
http://survivalebooks.org

The Rev. Charles Drayton Thomas

• An Amazing Experiment
• Precognition and Human Survival

Dr. T. Glen Hamilton

• Intention and Survival

Dr. C. J. Ducasse

• A Critical Examination of the Belief in Life After Death

Gary Schwartz, Ph.D.
"Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol" Julie Beischel, Gary E. Schwartz Explore (New York, N.Y.) 1 January 2007 (volume 3 issue 1 Pages 23-27 DOI: 10.1016/j.explore.2006.10.004)
http://www.explorejournal.com/article/PIIS155083070600454X/fulltext

More free e-books on psychic research can be found in the Psychic Research section of the chapter Recommended Reading

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