Ruggero Santilli

Ruggero Maria Santilli (born September 8, 1935) is an Italo-American nuclear physicist. Mainstream scientists dismiss his theories as fringe science.

Biography

Ruggero Maria Santilli was born September 8, 1935) in Capracotta. He studied physics at the University of Naples and earned his PhD in physics from the University of Turin, graduating in 1965. He held various academic positions in Italy until 1967, when he took a position at University of Miami; a year later he moved to Boston University, and subsequently held visiting scientist positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

In September 1981, Santilli established a one-man organization, the Institute for Basic Research in Boston; he told a reporter from St. Petersburg Times in 2007 that he left Harvard because scientists there viewed his work as "heresy".

In 1982 Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper wrote that Santilli's calls for tests on the validity of quantum mechanics within nuclear and hadronic structures, represented a return to scientific sanity.

In 1985 he published a book, Il Grande Grido: Ethical Probe on Einstein's Followers in the U.S.A, an Insider's View, in which he said that in many institutions there is an effective conspiracy to suppress or not investigate novel theories which may conflict with established scientific theories, such as Einstein's theory of relativity. According to Santilli, institutions receive funding and have established entire departments dedicated to long established theories, and so he argues that these same institutions are ill-equipped to challenge their own scientific paradigms with new theories.