Frederick Bernard Wood
"During World War II, Dr. Wood worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory in Cambridge, MA, where he helped develop the SCR-584 microwave radar used by U.S. and Allied military forces in defeating the Axis Powers, and on other projects. His MIT work was carried out under the auspices of the White House Office of Research and Development. During this time he met and married Elizabeth Neumann Mead in the First Unitarian Church of Boston.
"The couple, along with their first son, then returned to the University of California at Berkeley where he worked at the CB Radiation Lab and earned the Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Electrical Engineering. In 1952 Fred joined IBM Corporation where he worked until 1980 as a systems engineer, mostly in research and advanced systems development, in San Jose and Los Gatos, CA.
"He was a lifelong advocate and practitioner of the system sciences. In 1954 he was a founding member of the Society for General Systems Research (now known as the International Society for the Systems Sciences). He presented scientific papers throughout the United States and in Toronto, London, and Budapest, among others, and participated in study missions to Russia and Cuba. Dr. Wood was also founder and President of the Computer Social Impact Research Institute of San Jose, CA, and officer of the Earth Regeneration Society of Berkeley, CA.
"He was also a long-time advocate of socially responsible use of science and technology, and especially computer technology, and published a series of working papers called “Communications Theory in the Cause of Man”. He focused on global climate change beginning in the mid-1980s, and then on advanced electromagnetic applications beginning in the early 1990s—including potential new energy devices that could produce energy from the active physical vacuum (or quantum vacuum) more cleanly and cheaply than fossil fuel energy sources.
"In recent years, he continued his early focus on factors important to the survival of modern civilization and democratic societies. He was a life-long member of the Unitarian-Universalist religion and associated with Unitarian churches in Boston, Berkeley, San Jose, and most recently Flagstaff...
"His approach during his San Jose retirement was to pursue his key themes through a range of activities. Constructive and participatory social change was a constant priority throughout these years, as it was throughout his adult life. He wrote and attended meetings and conferences on the need for conscious, peaceful co-evolution of all segments of human society. He was particularly taken by the work of Barbara Marx Hubbard, and attended some of her seminars in Santa Barbara CA. He incorporated Hubbard’s concept of conscious evolution into his own work. He continued to support the work of a broad range of peace and humanitarian organizations. ..
"Fred Bernard Wood and Alden Bryant, and their colleagues, used the ERS and CSIRI as vehicles to bring issues of climate and global change to the attention of anyone and any group that would listen. They co-authored the book Whose World to Lose?; they prepared numerous papers and issue briefs, and presented on these issues at several of the SGSR/ISSS conferences in the USA and overseas, as well as at many other conferences worldwide.. They sent ERS issue briefs repeatedly to their congressional delegation and to State and Federal political leaders, and to environmental, labor union, civil liberties, and other advocacy groups.
"In addition to his role as ERS Treasurer, Fred Bernard served as a senior technical and scientific advisor to ERS. He used CSIRI as the platform for developing systems analyses of global environmental issues, and then incorporated those analyses into the ERS program. Fred Bernard and Alden were among the first to see the interconnections between energy, food, water, environment, economics, and the overall health and well being of humankind. They strongly identified with the Gaia concept of the living Earth, popularized by Christopher Lovelock.
"It was within this larger context that Alden and Fred Bernard made their historic month-long trip across the Soviet Union, to see and understand first hand the environmental and related challenges facing the Soviets. This trip was one of the most extensive made by visiting US scientists before the break up of the Soviet Union. This trip also led to some continuing collaboration and correspondence between Fred Bernard and a handful of Soviet computer science and earth science specialists. Fred Bernard came to realize that at the level of working scientists, there was shared concern in the Soviet Union as well as in the USA about the growing environmental and resource challenges facing the Planet Earth. ..
" Also in the mid-1990s, Fred Bernard reactivated his long-time interest in advanced electromagnetics. This interest centered around the view from his college days that there were additional dimensions of electromagnetic field activity beyond those recognized in conventional electromagnetics. He restudied the work of James Clerk Maxwell, the generally recognized father of electromagnetics, and found that Maxwell’s original work included references to several other variables and implied dimensions and complexities to electromagnetics. However, in the late 1800s other scientists had simplified Maxwell’s work in the rush to encourage practical applications, and because the broader nonlinear, extra dimensionality, quantum basis for electromagnetics had not yet been discovered by mainstream science. At the time Fred Bernard was a student at the University of California, there was no encouragement to go what at the time would have been well outside the box of recognized theory and science.
"The new, advanced electromagnetics would, however, have both positive and negative potential applications. And Fred Bernard gave attention to both, using his usual systems approach. On the positive side, the new electromagnetics offered the potential of clean, efficient, and low cost energy, that could be a major part of addressing and resolving climate change and other environmental issues. On the downside, the advanced electromagnetics also offered many possibilities for weaponization. In the mid to late 1990s, Fred Bernard collaborated closely with LTC (Ret) Tom Bearden, who had by that time already completed exhaustive studies of the Soviet Union’s presumed testing, development, and perhaps actual use of advanced electromagnetic weapons.
"Fred Bernard pursued a three-track strategy. He worked with Tom Bearden to attempt to assure that the USA was not vulnerable to surprise or covert attack by the Former Soviet Union using advanced EM weapons. He collaborated with EM researchers and civil liberties advocates concerned about possible covert use of such weapons by rogue elements of the US military and intelligence communities, possibly against US citizens. And he partnered with Bearden and with Alden Bryant and other new energy analysts to advocate for fair consideration of new energy options in addressing the US and global energy, environmental, and climate issues.
"Toward the end of his San Jose years, Fred Bernard began to encounter more serious personal health issues. This intensified his core life-long interest in complementary and alternative health. Faced with a diagnosis of systemic artherosclerosis, he embarked on an extensive CAM program that included vitamins and supplements, chiropractic, chelation therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and electromagnetic therapy. While the impact of these therapies cannot be accurately known, he did muster enough personal energy and motivation to “retire” for a second time, to Flagstaff AZ, in 2003." [1]
Fred died of a heart attack March 29, 2006, at age 88 in his home in Flagstaff. He was a long-time Circle member of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. [1]
