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The Editor has asked me to write this obituary for Michael Thalbourne, who was well known throughout the parapsychological community, because I worked with him during a critical period in his career. I am not a parapsychologist myself, and would have been quite unsuited for this task were it not for the help I have received from friends and colleagues of Michael, notably Carlos Alvarado, William Braud, and Lance Storm. Michael himself wrote a short autobiography that can be found at http://www.pflyceum.org/143.html.
Michael died on May 4, 2010, in hospital in Adelaide, Australia, at the age of 55. For more than 20 years he had suffered from bipolar disorder, and his constant struggle with that terrible affliction probably contributed to his early death, though the actual cause remains uncertain.
He first came across parapsychology during his years in high school, while going through a personal crisis of religious faith. During his undergraduate years at the University of Adelaide, he was able to design and carry out experiments in parapsychology, and his honors diesis based on that research earned him a prize in social psychology.
After a number of difficulties, all too familiar to parapsychologists, Michael went to the University of Edinburgh for graduate study. His supervisor was John Beloff, who welcomed him but also warned him about career difficulties that would surely follow if he persisted in die field. Michael had his mind made up, however, and continued with drawing reproduction experiments for his dissertation.
Following his PhD, Michael worked with Erlendur Haraldsson in Iceland and India, where he spent some time investigating the alleged paranormal phenomena associated with Sai Baba. He then moved to the McDonnell Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis, which is where I first met him.
The McDonnell Laboratory was set up for a 5-year term at the request of J. S. McDonnell, the founder of the aircraft company, and a major influence on Washington University. He had hoped for a large research center, but the most eminent scientists at the university, predictably, refused to have anything to do with such an enterprise. In the end, only one faculty member, myself, a physicist, was willing to take on the task of directing the laboratory, and most of the funds that...