Bhaktivedanta Institute Pioneer Richard L. Thompson passes away
ISKCON Newsweekly reports the departure of scientist Richard L. Thompson, 61, on Thursday, September 18th, apparently from heart attack at his home in Alachua, Florida. His body was found at the bottom of the swimming pool sometime in the afternoon.Richard L. Thompson was one of the pioneers and central figures of The Bhaktivedanta Institute, and authored a number of works on science, principally Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science, Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy, Forbidden Archeology: the Hidden History of the Human Race [co-authored with Michael Cremo], Alien Identities, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, as well as articles published by science journals and ISKCON's Back to Godhead magazine.
Sri Guru and Gauranga
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Science & Technology Society of Devotees - Disciples of Srila PrabhupadaRICHARD L. THOMPSON: Actually here you calculate, suppose you threw a protein together at chance—and here we even allow a ten percent error, you're allowing to get it wrong among ten percent of the proteins—but still chance comes out to ten minus 244th power. Now the scientists are always saying if you wait for a long enough time, even something very unlikely can happen; but here we have a calculation of how long you'd have to wait, according to mathematics and the probability theory, and even if you assume an unrealistically high rate of forming proteins at random, still you'd have to wait, according to this, ten to the 167th power billion years. more
Born in Binghamton, New York in the year 1947, Richard L. Thompson received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University, specializing in probability theory and statistics.
In September, 1975 he became a disciple of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (Srila Prabhupada), Founder-Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, receiving the spiritual name Sadaputa das. Recognizing his disciple's intelligence and scientific leanings, Srila Prabhupada encouraged him to question modern science's hypothesis that matter can generate life and to engage the scientific community in discussion and debate on the origin of life. This was the cornerstone of The Bhaktivedanta Institute.
Richard L. Thompson dedicated the better part of his career to further investigation into science topics presented in the ancient Vedic texts and substantiating them, and notably, in the book Forbidden Archeology (celebrated as an underground classic that shocked the scientific community) unearthed serious breaches in the integrity of mainstream scientific research.