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Richard Thieme

business consultant, author, media commentator and speaker

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ7329433 ↗
Source-derived summary

Richard Thieme (born 1944), is a former priest who became a commentator on technology and culture, founding the consulting firm ThiemeWorks. He is the author of the syndicated column "Islands in the Clickstream", which was turned into a book of the same name in 2004. In 2010 he published a book of short stories, Mind Games, and in 2012 he contributed to the peer-reviewed academic work, UFOs and Government, a Historical Inquiry.

Biography

Early life and academic career

Thieme was born in Chicago, with one of his parents Christian and one Jewish, and one older brother, the folksinger Art Thieme. Raised Jewish, Thieme was confirmed as a young man in a Reform synagogue, and attended Lake View High School, graduating in 1961. As a teenager he began writing science fiction, with his first story, "Pleasant Journey", published by John W. Campbell in Analog science fiction magazine in 1963, when Thieme was 19. Thieme studied English literature at Northwestern University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and receiving his B.A. in 1965, and also marrying and starting a family. In 1967, he earned an M.A. in English at the University of Chicago. For the next five years he taught literature at the University of Illinois - Chicago Circle campus, after which he moved to England for two years. There, at age 30, he converted to the Anglican church.

Editorial summary

“Richard Thieme” enters the record as business consultant, author, media commentator and speaker. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Richard, Thieme and business can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1944, 2004, 2010, 2012—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1944-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Richard, Thieme and business.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Richard Thieme” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Richard, Thieme and business provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7329433. VIAF identifies the subject as 7708509. The Library of Congress control number is no2004111410. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 2004, 2010 and 2012.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Richard Thieme”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Richard Thieme primary sources, Richard Thieme archive and Richard research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Richard Thieme”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Richard Thieme” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.