Petr Beckmann

From Free net encyclopedia

Petr Beckmann (1924-1993) was a physicist who defected to the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1963 and became a Professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado.

He was a prolific scientific author; he wrote several electrical engineering textbooks and non-technical works, including The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear (Golem Press, 1976), a book promoting nuclear power during the height of the anti-nuclear movement. He also wrote one of the most captivating and insightful books of its kind, A History of Pi, documenting the history of the calculation of π. He published his own newsletter, Access to Energy (www.accesstoenergy.com), now written by Arthur B. Robinson. Beckmann's last issue was published in August 1993. He passed away at that time and the next issue, September 1993, was done by Robinson.

Beckmann was also a frequent and colorful participant in Usenet debates. In them, he claimed to have debunked Albert Einstein's theory of relativity in his book Einstein Plus 2, as well as in another self-published journal, Galilean Electrodynamics. The History of π also expresses his intense and colorful opposition to Catholicism, Naziism, and Communism - all of which have controlled Czechoslovakia.