Archives West Finding Aid

Ralph Juergens (6 May 1924 – 2 November 1979) was a general contractor from Lakewood, OH. He was an early disciple of Immanuel Velikovsky and associate editor for the journal Pensee. Juergens received a BS in Civil Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and ran a contracting company, Ralph E. Juergens Co. General Contracting. He also worked in the Construction Methods department at McGraw-Hill Publishing.

Juergens was first introduced to the works of Velikovsky by his sister Harriet in 1961, who gave him a copy of Worlds in Collision. Juergens wrote to Velikovsky that same year expressing interest in his work. Juergens co-authored the book The Velikovsky Affair: The Warfare of Science and Scientism, with Alfred de Grazia and Livio C. Stecchini in 1966 and published numerous articles drawing on Velikovsky's theories between 1972 and 1983.

In 1972, Juergens proposed a theory of an electrically powered sun. Juergens's theory was inspired by Velikovsky's 1946 book Cosmos without Gravitation, although Velikovsky himself did not endorse this theory. After 1972, Juergens focused much of his research and writing on his electric sun theory.

Warner Sizemore (23 October 1925 – 11 April 2017) was an associate professor of World Religions at Glassboro State College (now Rowan University). He graduated from East Tennessee State University and Bob Jones University and became an ordained Presbyterian minister. Sizemore served at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Malvern, PA, but in the mid-1960s left the ministry and moved to Princeton, NJ where he began working as Immanuel Velikovsky's secretary. Sizemore also served as an executive editor of the journal Kronos and wrote several articles for the publication.

Earl Milton (26 February 1935 – 6 November 1999) was a professor of Astronomy at the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, AB. He was a founding member of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS) and the Canadian Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (CSIS). Milton worked with Ralph Juergens on electromagnetism research and on the theory of the electric sun until Juergens's death in 1979.

Alfred de Grazia (29 December 1919 – 13 July 2014) was a political scientist and author. He was born in Chicago to Alfred de Grazia Sr. and Katherine Lupo de Grazia. He received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago in 1948 and worked as a professor of political science at University of Minnesota, Brown University, and a professor of social theory at New York University.

De Grazia has written extensively in both the political science field and on the works of Immanuel Velikovsky and controversies surrounding his theories. His most notable work related to Velikovsky is the 1963 edited collection of essays, The Velikovsky Affair: The Warfare of Science and Scientism with Ralph Juergens and Livio C. Stecchini. The book focused on the scientific community's rejection of Velikovsky's theories and scientific censorship.

An ardent supporter of Velikovsky's theories about the impact of extraterrestrial catastrophes on Earth, de Grazia sought to incorporate these ideas into a new field of study he called "quantavolution." Between 1981 and 1984, he published ten volumes of his Quantavolution Series, which outlined his theories of how sudden, catastrophic events of cosmic origins impacted early humanity.

Albert Bruce Mainwaring (23 February 1927 – 6 September 2022) was born in Roxborough, PA to Albert Harold Mainwaring and Ethel Hansbury Mainwaring in 1927. Mainwaring graduated from the University of Pennsylvania around 1945 with a degree in mathematics. During World War II, Mainwaring served as a lieutenant in the Navy and completed his education as part of a Navy officers training program. After the war, he worked at his father's machine shop, which manufactured small diameter metal tubing. Mainwaring used financing from the G.I. Bill to buy a farm in a suburb of Philadelphia, where he relocated his father's machine shop. The tubing the company produced was used in electronics like radios and televisions and eventually expanded into the aviation and aerospace markets. Manwaring eventually served as founder and CEO of three precision metal tubing manufacturing firms.

Mainwaring was first introduced to the works of Immanuel Velikovsky in 1963 when he read an article by Eric Laribee in Harper's magazine about Velikovsky's theories. Mainwaring later bought Velikovsky's three books and developed a lifelong interest in his work. He met Velikovsky at a lecture at the Hill School in Pottstown, PA in 1968. That same year, Mainwaring formed the Foundation for Studies of Modern Science (FOSMOS) with other researchers, including Alfred de Grazia, David Talbott, and Warner Sizemore. The organization used an inter-disciplinary research approach to explore Velikovsky's theories. He served on the organization's board of trustees and as its treasurer. In 2001, Mainwaring also founded the Mainwaring Archive Foundation, which focused on exploring alternatives to mainstream science and collected the papers of researchers interested in the works of Velikovsky.

Anthony Peratt (1 September 1942 – ) is an electrical engineer and researcher in the field of plasma physics. He received a BS in electrical engineering from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in 1964. He later received both an MS (1967) and Ph.D. (1971) from University of Southern California (USC) in electrical engineering. From 1972 to 1979 he worked as a staff member for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA and was a guest scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany (1975-1979) and the Alfven Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden (1985). Peratt began working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1981 in the Applied Theoretical Physics Division and has served as the Scientific Advisor to the United States Department of Energy (1995-1999).

Peratt's research on the connection between plasma physics and ancient petroglyphs drew interest from Velikovskian researchers. Peratt has corresponded with David Talbott and Bruce Mainwaring regarding a 2001 lecture he delivered at the University of Pennsylvania, and his research and theories have been discussed on the Kronia listserv.