Itzhak Bentov
Itzhak "Ben" Bentov | |
---|---|
File:Itzhak Bentov in the mid-1950s.png | |
Born | Itzhak Emery Bentov August 9, 1923 |
Died | May 25, 1979 | (aged 55)
Cause of death | Plane crash |
Nationality | American, Israeli |
Occupation(s) | scientist, inventor, author |
Children | Sharona Ben-Tov Muir |
Itzhak "Ben" Bentov (also Ben-Tov) (Hebrew: יצחק בנטוב) (August 9, 1923 – May 25, 1979) was a Czechoslovakia-born Israeli American scientist, inventor, mystic and author. His many inventions, including the steerable cardiac catheter, helped pioneer the biomedical engineering industry.[1] He was also an early exponent of what has come to be referred to as consciousness studies and authored several books on the subject.
Early life
Bentov was born in Humenné, Czechoslovakia, in 1923. During World War II, his parents were killed in Nazi concentration camps.[2]
He narrowly escaped being sent to the camps and moved to British Palestine, first living on the Shoval kibbutz in the Negev.[3]
Despite not having a university degree,[3] Bentov joined the Israeli Science Corps, which David Ben-Gurion incorporated into the Israeli Defense Forces one month before Israel declared statehood in 1948. The Science Corps became a military branch known by the Hebrew acronym HEMED. Bentov designed Israel's first rocket for the War of Independence. HEMED was forced to make improvised weapons as there was a worldwide embargo on selling weapons to the Jewish state.[3]
Bentov immigrated to the United States in 1954,[4] and settled in Massachusetts. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1962.[5]
Inventions
Bentov began with a workshop in the basement of a Catholic church in Belmont, Massachusetts in the 1960s.[1] In 1967, he built the steerable heart catheter and attracted the attention of businessman John Abele, with whom Bentov founded the Medi-Tech corporation in 1969.[6]
Abele later recalled of Bentov's workshop,
He had the most amazing collection of tools. He had a chemistry lab, he had an electronics lab, he had a miller so he could mill and shape steel or wood or plastic, he had an extruder so he could work with polymers. He would literally make his own polymers or at least mix different polymers in order to get what he wanted. As a result, he was kind of a renaissance person, technologically as well as intellectually.
In 1979, Abele and Peter Nicholas looked to grow the successful business and established Boston Scientific as a holding company to purchase Medi-Tech.[7]
Bentov was the holder of numerous patents. In addition to the steerable cardiac catheter, his inventions included diet spaghetti, automobile brake shoes, EKG electrodes and pacemaker leads.[2]
Patents
Filing date | Publication Date | Title | Patent No. |
---|---|---|---|
August 18, 1965 | July 30, 1968 | Means and method of converting fibers into yarn | U.S. patent 3,394,540 |
December 13, 1952 | October 9, 1956 | Method of making laminated plastic tubing | U.S. patent 2,766,160 |
December 14, 1961 | November 17, 1964 | Dressing | U.S. patent 3,157,178 |
April 23, 1962 | January 28, 1964 | Power transmission | U.S. patent 3,119,283 |
January 8, 1965 | April 11, 1967 | Pump | U.S. patent 3,313,240 |
August 7, 1968 | September 20, 1971 | Controlled motion devices | U.S. patent 3,605,725 |
March 24, 1966 | October 28, 1969 | Multiple conductor electrode | U.S. patent 3,474,791 |
November 5, 1958 | February 20, 1962 | Process of making surface coats for masonry building units | U.S. patent 3,021,573 |
March 12, 1962 | January 26, 1965 | Method of encapsulating liquid particles in thermoplastic shell | U.S. patent 3,167,602 |
May 16, 1962 | January 19, 1965 | Method of explosively forming fibers | U.S. patent 3,165,826 |
August 28, 1969 | May 25, 1971 | Anatomical model | U.S. patent 3,579,858 |
June 19, 1962 | September 3, 1963 | Means for administering medicine | U.S. patent 3,102,540 |
January 21, 1980 | March 23, 1982 | Dilator | U.S. patent 4,320,762 |
December 12, 1966 | January 27, 1970 | Apparatus for making tubes of bonded flexible strips | U.S. patent 3,491,756 |
November 24, 1958 | August 28, 1962 | Scratch masking coating composition for masonry | U.S. patent 3,051,678 |
Spirituality
Bentov was fascinated by consciousness, in particular how it related to physiology. In his 1977 book, Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness, he wrote that "consciousness permeates everything."
He was a very inventive person, but also a person who was not the type you would normally think would be an inventor. He was a very spiritual person, he did meditation, he was a very soft-spoken person. He was interested in how the brain worked and actually attached electrodes to his head which were connected to a function generator in which he could change the wave shape and the power and learned about how the brain interprets these different frequencies.[6]
— John Abele
Bentov's invention was a seismographic device to record the heartbeat, in particular the aorta's reverberations. Marc Seifer described the results: "During normal breathing, the reverberations in the aorta are out of phase with the heartbeat and the system is inharmonious. However, during meditation and when the breath is held, the echo off the bifurcation of the aorta (where the aorta forks at the pelvis to go into each leg) is in resonance with the heartbeat and the system becomes synchronized, thus utilizing a minimum amount of energy. This resonant beat is approximately seven cycles per minute, which corresponds not only to the alpha rhythm of the brain but also to the low-level magnetic pulsations of the Earth."[8]
Death and legacy
Bentov was killed on May 25, 1979, as a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 191 that crashed at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.[9] His daughter, English professor Sharona Ben-Tov Muir, wrote a memoir about her father, The Book of Telling: Tracing the Secrets of My Father's Lives in 2005. It was not until after his death that she learned about his life in the Israeli Defense Forces and that he had created Israel's first rocket. Searching for answers as to why he never discussed this part of his life, Muir traveled to Israel and researched his years there.[3]
Published works
- Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness, E. P. Dutton, 1977, ISBN 978-0-525-47458-6; Inner Traditions - Bear and Company, 1988, ISBN 0-89281-202-8
- A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness: A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation, Inner Traditions – Bear and Company, 2000, ISBN 0-89281-814-X
- A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation with Mirtala Bentov, Dutton Books, 1982, ISBN 0-525-47701-2
- Micromotions of the body as a factor in the development of the nervous system, a centerpiece article published in the anthology Kundalini, Evolution, and Enlightenment by John White, editor, 1998, ISBN 1-55778-303-9
References
- ^ a b "Medical devices and disruptive technology: Boston Scientific". MaRS Discovery District. February 8, 2013. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
- ^ a b David Monagan; David O. Williams, MD. (2007). Journey into the Heart: A Tale of Pioneering Doctors and Their Race to Transform Cardiovascular Medicine Hardcover. New York: Penguin Group. p. 106. ISBN 978-1592402656. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
- ^ a b c d Barbara Hollander (December 12, 2005). "A 'someone' to love". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
- ^ "Spiritual Frontiers Hears Itzhak Bentov". The Hour. October 22, 1977. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
- ^ "Index to Petitions and Records of Naturalizations of the U.S. and District Courts for the District of Massachusetts, 1907–1966". M1545. National Archives and Records Administration.
{{cite journal}}
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(help) - ^ a b c "Boston Scientific's beginning, through John Abele's eyes". MedCity News. June 9, 2010. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
- ^ "About Us: History". Boston Scientific. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
- ^ Marc Seifer Ph.D. (2008). Transcending the Speed of Light: Consciousness, Quantum Physics, and the Fifth Dimension. Inner Traditions – Bear & Company. p. 49. ISBN 978-1594772290.
- ^ "Jumbo Jet Crashes On Take Off". The Sunday Herald. May 27, 1979.
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Further reading
- Sharona Ben-Tov Muir, The Book of Telling: Tracing the Secrets of My Father's Lives. Bison, 2008. ISBN 978-0803216488.
External links
- From Atom To Cosmos: (1978 interview with Bentov) on YouTube
- Review of his work from an article that first appeared in PS-Magazine.com
- 1923 births
- 1979 deaths
- American inventors
- Jewish inventors
- Consciousness researchers and theorists
- Mystics
- Czechoslovak Jews
- Israeli Jews
- Czechoslovak emigrants to Israel
- Israeli emigrants to the United States
- American people of Slovak-Jewish descent
- Accidental deaths in Illinois
- Israeli mechanical engineers
- Scientists from Prague
- Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1979
- Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States
- Naturalized citizens of the United States
- Transcendental Meditation exponents