Itzhak Bentov

Itzhak "Ben" Bentov (also Ben-Tov; ; 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. He was also a believer in the holographic universe theory and an early proponent of what has come to be referred to as consciousness studies and authored several books on the subject.

Bentov was killed in the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 shortly after takeoff from Chicago O'Hare Airport in 1979, which remains the worst non-terrorism-related aviation disaster to have taken place on US soil.

Early life Bentov was born in Humenné, Czechoslovakia (in present-day Slovakia), in 1923. During World War II, his parents, his younger brother and sister were killed in German Nazi concentration camps.

He narrowly escaped being sent to the camps and moved to British Palestine, first living on the Shoval kibbutz in the Negev.

Despite not having a university degree, and settled in Massachusetts. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1962.

Inventions Bentov began with a workshop in the basement of a Catholic church in Belmont, Massachusetts, in the 1960s.

Abele later recalled 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. — John Abele

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.

Personal life Bentov had a daughter, Sharona Ben-Tov Muir, with his first wife, whom he would divorce. Later he married soviet-born sculptor and poet (Kharkiv, 1929 - Arizona, 2026).

Death and legacy Bentov was killed on May 25, 1979, as a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 191 that crashed shortly after takeoff from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. At the time of his death, he was traveling to California where he had been set to present his ideas on science and mysticism to a group of scientists from Japan. He was 55 years old. 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.

Published works Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness, E. P. Dutton, 1977, ; Inner Traditions – Bear & Company, 1988, A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness: A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation, Inner Traditions – Bear and Company, 2000, rev. ed. of A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation with Mirtala Bentov, Dutton Books, 1982, Micromotions of the body as a factor in the development of the nervous system, published in Kundalini – psychosis or transcendence? by Lee Sannella, 1976, reprinted in Kundalini, Evolution, and Enlightenment by John White, editor, 1979,