Itzhak Bentov facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Itzhak Bentov
Born	Emerich Tobiás August 9, 1923 Humenné, Czechoslovakia
Died	May 25, 1979(1979-05-25) (aged 55) Des Plaines, Illinois, United States
Nationality	American, Israeli
Other names	Imre Tobiás, Itzhak Emery Bentov
Occupation	Scientist, inventor, author
Children	Sharona Ben-Tov Muir

Itzhak "Ben" Bentov (born August 9, 1923 – died May 25, 1979) was a smart scientist, inventor, and author. He was born in Czechoslovakia and later became an American citizen.

Bentov created many useful things, like a special steerable tube for heart procedures. His work helped start the biomedical engineering field, which combines biology and engineering to create medical tools. He was also very interested in how our minds work, a field called consciousness studies. He wrote several books about his ideas.

Sadly, Itzhak Bentov died in a plane crash in 1979. It happened shortly after takeoff from Chicago O'Hare Airport.

Early Life and Adventures

Itzhak Bentov was born in a place called Humenné, which is now in Slovakia, in 1923. During World War II, his family faced terrible times. His parents, younger brother, and sister were killed in Nazi concentration camps.

Itzhak managed to escape being sent to these camps. He moved to Mandatory Palestine, which is now Israel. He first lived on a kibbutz, a type of community farm, called Shoval in the Negev desert.

Even without a university degree, Bentov joined the Israeli Science Corps. This group later became part of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1948. It was known by the Hebrew name HEMED. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, HEMED had to make their own weapons. This was because other countries wouldn't sell weapons to the new Jewish state. Bentov actually designed Israel's very first rocket for this war!

In 1954, Bentov moved to the United States. He settled in Massachusetts and became a U.S. citizen in 1962.

Amazing Inventions

In the 1960s, Bentov started his workshop in the basement of a church in Massachusetts. In 1967, he created a groundbreaking invention: the steerable heart catheter. This special tube could be guided inside the body during heart procedures.

His invention caught the eye of a businessman named John Abele. Together, they started a company called Medi-Tech in 1969. Abele remembered Bentov's workshop as amazing. He said Bentov had all kinds of tools. He could work with chemicals, electronics, metals, wood, and plastics. He even made his own special plastics! Abele called him a "renaissance person" because he was skilled in so many different areas.

Later, in 1979, Abele and another person named Peter Nicholas wanted to expand the business. They created Boston Scientific to buy Medi-Tech. Today, Boston Scientific is a very well-known medical technology company.

Bentov held many patents for his inventions. Besides the steerable heart catheter, he also invented things like "diet spaghetti," special brake shoes for cars, and parts for pacemakers.

Exploring Consciousness

Itzhak Bentov was very curious about consciousness – how our minds and awareness work. He especially wondered how it connected to our bodies. In his 1977 book, Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness, he wrote that "consciousness permeates everything." This means he believed awareness is everywhere.

John Abele, his business partner, described Bentov as a very spiritual and soft-spoken person. He was interested in how the brain worked. Bentov even put electrodes on his own head! These were connected to a device that could change electrical waves. He used this to learn how the brain reacts to different frequencies.

Bentov also invented a device that could record heartbeats, especially the echoes inside a major blood vessel called the aorta. A researcher named Marc Seifer explained what Bentov found. During normal breathing, the echoes in the aorta don't quite match the heartbeat. But during meditation, when someone holds their breath, the echoes from the aorta become perfectly in sync with the heartbeat. This makes the body use less energy. This synchronized beat is about seven times per second. This number is interesting because it's similar to the brain's alpha rhythm and even the Earth's natural magnetic pulses.

Family Life

Itzhak Bentov had a daughter named Sharona Ben-Tov Muir with his first wife. They later divorced. He then married a talented artist and poet from Ukraine, Mirtala Serhiivna Pylypenko-Kardinalovska, also known as Mirtala Bentov.

His Legacy

Itzhak Bentov passed away on May 25, 1979. He was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 191, which crashed after taking off from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. He was 55 years old. At the time, he was traveling to California to share his ideas about science and mysticism with scientists from Japan.

His daughter, Sharona Ben-Tov Muir, who is a professor, wrote a book about her father in 2005. It's called The Book of Telling: Tracing the Secrets of My Father's Lives. She learned many things about him only after he died. For example, she discovered his secret life in the Israeli Defense Forces and that he had created Israel's first rocket. To find answers about why he never talked about this part of his life, she traveled to Israel to research his past.

Published Works

• Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness, 1977
• A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation with Mirtala Bentov, 1982
• Micromotions of the body as a factor in the development of the nervous system, published in the book Kundalini, Evolution, and Enlightenment, 1998
• A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness: A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation, 2000