Biography:Gustaf Strömberg

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Short description: Swedish-American astronomer (1882–1962)
Studio photograph, 1931

Gustaf Benjamin Strömberg (16 December 1882 – 30 January 1962) was a Swedish-born American astronomer who worked at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California. He went on to examine ideas on the non-physical world, the soul, psychic and other phenomena that would now be termed the paranormal, making him pioneer of the study of the paranormal. Interpreting ideas from mathematical physics on waves and fields, he suggested that living cells were influenced by such invisible entities and that human memories could be immortal, as also claiming a mathematical support for the existence of a soul.

Life and work

Strömberg was born in Gothenburg to Johanna Elisabeth née Noehrman and Bengt Johan Gustaf Lorentz Strömberg. He studied at the University of Lund, obtaining a PhD in 1916. He then moved to the Carnegie Institution and worked at the Mount Wilson Observatory. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1922. His astronomy work had largely been on the studies of star velocities.[1] His work included studies on the luminosity of the long-period variable stars and his work on the “asymmetry of stellar motions” making use of the Lindblad–Oort theory of galactic rotation suggested globular clusters with some stars effectively moving towards us.[2][3][4][5] He then used this to estimate radial velocities.[6][7][8][9][10]

Alongside his astronomy he began to consider the non physical world. In 1940 he published his thoughts on the soul and its immortality in The Soul of the Universe, dedicated to the philosopher John Elof Boodin. He resigned from the observatory in 1946 to pursue his parallel projects dealing with the psychic world. In his works he suggested that human memories could be immortal[11] and explained it using the idea that there were waves in space and time that could not be destroyed. He also suggested that all living cells were surrounded by fields, although his explanation was found to be confusing and difficult to understand. George Gamow, for instance, in a review[12][13] pointed out that wave functions did not have physical world counterparts.[14][15][16][17][18] Strömberg attempted to settle some of the objections, particularly those raised by biologists, in his next book The Searchers (1948), in which he presented his ideas in the form of a story with the central character being a Russian Marxist refugee with an open mind, named Boris Charkov, who attends the discussions of a society called the Searchers.[19]

References

  1. ↑ Bowen, Ira S. (1946). "Survey of the year's work at Mount Wilson". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 58 (345): 329–340. doi:10.1086/125862. ISSN 0004-6280. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40672020. 
  2. ↑ Strömberg, Gustaf (1932). "Space Structure and Motion". Science 76 (1978): 477–481. doi:10.1126/science.76.1978.477. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17771627. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1658496. 
  3. ↑ Strömberg, Gustaf (1931). "The motion of a particle inside a body of non-uniform density with applications to the motions in spherical and flat star systems". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 43 (254): 263–265. doi:10.1086/124136. ISSN 0004-6280. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40668828. 
  4. ↑ Stromberg, Gustaf (1924). "The Motions of the Stars and the Existence of a Velocity-Restriction in a Universal World-Frame". The Scientific Monthly 19 (5): 465–478. ISSN 0096-3771. https://www.jstor.org/stable/7367. 
  5. ↑ Strömberg, Gustaf (1931). "A Determination of the Velocity of Light from the Group of Extra-Galactic Nebulae in Ursa Major". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 43 (254): 266–267. doi:10.1086/124137. ISSN 0004-6280. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40668829. 
  6. ↑ Stromberg, Gustaf (1922). "On the Distribution of the Velocities of Stars of Late Types of Spectrum". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 8 (6): 141–146. doi:10.1073/pnas.8.6.141. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 16576641. 
  7. ↑ Hockey, Thomas; Trimble, Virginia; Williams, Thomas R. et al., eds. (2007) (in en), Strömberg, Gustav, New York, NY: Springer, p. 1099, doi:10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_1330, ISBN 978-0-387-30400-7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_1330, retrieved 2022-08-24 
  8. ↑ Stromberg, Gustaf (1918). "A Determination of the Solar Motion and the Stream Motion Based on Radial Velocities and Absolute Magnitudes". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 4 (2): 36–41. doi:10.1073/pnas.4.2.36. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 16576269. 
  9. ↑ Stromberg, Gustaf (1928). "The Determination of Absolute-Magnitude Dispersion with Application to Giant M Stars". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 14 (11): 834–838. doi:10.1073/pnas.14.11.834. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 16577141. 
  10. ↑ Stromberg, Gustaf (1925). "The General Distribution of Cosmical Velocities". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 11 (6): 365–370. doi:10.1073/pnas.11.6.365. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 16587019. 
  11. ↑ Stromberg, Gustaf (1937). The Material and the Immaterial Universe. Leaflets 2(98). Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Bibcode: 1937ASPL....2..189S. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1937ASPL....2..189S/abstract. 
  12. ↑ Gamow, G. (1940). Stromberg, Gustaf. ed. "Has the Univserse a Soul?". The Scientific Monthly 51 (6): 564–565. ISSN 0096-3771. https://www.jstor.org/stable/17151. 
  13. ↑ Stromberg, Gustaf (1941). "Living Wave Functions". The Scientific Monthly 52 (2): 181. ISSN 0096-3771. https://www.jstor.org/stable/17384. 
  14. ↑ Strömberg, Gustaf; Korzybski, A. (1945). "The autonomous field". ETC: A Review of General Semantics 3 (1): 12–26. ISSN 0014-164X. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42581383. 
  15. ↑ Stromberg, Gustaf (1961). "Space, time, and eternity" (in en). Journal of the Franklin Institute 272 (2): 134–144. doi:10.1016/0016-0032(61)90738-4. https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/0016003261907384. 
  16. ↑ Stromberg, Gustaf (1942). "The Physical and the Non-Physical Worlds and Their Intermediate Elements". The Scientific Monthly 54 (1): 71–80. ISSN 0096-3771. https://www.jstor.org/stable/17475. 
  17. ↑ Strömberg, Gustaf (1946). "Emergent energy" (in en). Journal of the Franklin Institute 241 (5): 323–339. doi:10.1016/0016-0032(46)90482-6. PMID 20982742. https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/0016003246904826. 
  18. ↑ Strömberg, Gustaf (1942). "Coherence in the Physical World" (in en). Philosophy of Science 9 (4): 323–334. doi:10.1086/286779. ISSN 0031-8248. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0031824800027860/type/journal_article. 
  19. ↑ Fueloep-Miller, René (1950). Schroedinger, Erwin; Stroemberg, Gustaf; Jones, H. Spencer. eds. "The Riddle of Life". The American Scholar 19 (3): 366–380. ISSN 0003-0937. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41205335. 

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