Jack Sarfatti facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jack Sarfatti
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Sarfatti in 2007
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| Born | September 14, 1939 New York City, U.S.
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Jack Sarfatti (born September 14, 1939) is an American theoretical physicist. Working largely outside academia, most of Sarfatti's publications revolve around quantum physics and consciousness.
Sarfatti was a leading member of the Fundamental Fysiks Group, an informal group of physicists in California in the 1970s who, according to historian of science David Kaiser, aimed to inspire some of the investigations into quantum physics that underlie parts of quantum information science. Sarfatti co-wrote Space-Time and Beyond (1975; credited to Bob Toben and Fred Alan Wolf) and has self-published several books.
Early life and education
Sarfatti was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Hyman and Millie Sarfatti and raised in the borough's Midwood neighborhood. His father was born in Kastoria, Greece, and moved to New York as a child with his family.
After graduating from Midwood High School in 1956, Sarfatti attended Cornell University, where he received a B.A. in physics in 1960. Following graduate studies at Cornell and Brandeis University, he obtained an M.S. in 1967 from the University of California, San Diego and a Ph.D. in 1969 from the University of California, Riverside under Fred Cummings, both in physics; his dissertation was "Gauge Invariance in the Theory of Superfluidity."
Career
From 1967 to 1971, Sarfatti was an assistant professor of physics at San Diego State University. He also studied at the Cornell Space Science Center, the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment, the Max Planck Institute for Physics, and International Centre for Theoretical Physics. Then he decided to leave academia around the time when he was in Trieste.
Sarfatti was invited to help shape the 100 Year Starship program.
Sarfatti's ideas relating quantum physics to David Chalmers's "hard problem" (i.e. how our conscious experiences are generated) are mentioned in a paper by Paavo Pylkkänen.
Sarfatti claims to have been recruited by agents of the CIA and DOD to work on both the physics of consciousness and the propulsion of "flying saucers" back in the 1970s. MIT professor David Kaiser mentions these connections in his book How the Hippies Saved Physics. As evidence Sarfatti cites a recording of his 1973 meeting with Harold E. Puthoff, Russell Targ, and others on his visit to Stanford Research Institute.
Sarfatti's name appears in several released CIA documents including a summary for the STARGATE project for remote viewing published June 1, 1979.
Politics
According to Kaiser, Sarfatti's politics have leaned to the right since the early 1980s, when he became dependent on a cadre of "politically conservative thinkers who were drawn to certain New Age ideas" for research funding, following the dissolution of his relationship with Werner Erhard.
Other activities
A longtime habitué of Caffe Trieste, Sarfatti has been involved in the Fundamental Fysiks Group, the Esalen Institute-affiliated Physics–Consciousness Research Group, and the 100 Year Starship project.
Selected works
- Toben, Bob (1975). Space-Time and Beyond: Toward an Explanation of the Unexplainable. E.P. Dutton (Toben in conversation with Fred Alan Wolf and Jack Sarfatti). ISBN: 978-0-525-47399-2
