[DeadCelebrityAlert] Robert Ettinger, 92, cryonics "immortalist," dead, frozen

 

ROBERT CHESTER WILSON ETTINGER IMMORTALIST 4-12-1918 - 23-7-2011

Robert Ettinger, the intellectual father of the cryonics movement, whose members have themselves frozen at death pending scientific resurrection, has died at his home at Clinton Township in, Michigan, in the United States. He was 92.

Ettinger styled himself an ''immortalist'', since he argued that whole body or head-only freezing (''neurological suspension'') was only one means of achieving indefinite life. His rationale for pursuing this goal was contained in his book The Prospect Of Immortality (1964), which revealed him as an unquenchable optimist about mankind's technological future.

. . .

Ettinger's frozen body has joined those of his mother and two wives in cold storage. His first patient was his mother, Rhea, who died in 1977. ''I don't know if she was very enthusiastic about it,'' he said, ''but she was willing.'' A decade later, he froze his second patient - his wife Elaine, who died in 1987 and with whom he had two children. The next year he married his second wife, Mae. When she died in 2000, she was the institute's 34th patient.

Cryonics was a serious topic for Ettinger, but he had a sense of humour. ''If both of my wives are revived,'' he said last year, ''that will be a high class problem.''

He is survived by a son, David, and daughter, Shelley, from his first marriage, both of whom are active immortalists.

More (w/photos):
http://www.theage.com.au/national/obituaries/an-idea-frozen-in-time-that-promises-life-hereafter-20110725-1hx1f.html

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