Immanuel Velikovsky

It is difficult to describe in short the enthusiasm and devotion provoked by and given to my research. We lived almost in poverty. I used pencils, two for a nickel, and could not buy a fountain pen, when I lost mine.

My first name - I have no middle name - was chosen by my father, as he told me, on that solitary walk in the forested hills. He selected it from a verse of the seventh chapter of Isaiah; there was no Immanuel among our ancestors known to him.

My earliest memory is dreamlike: in a small orchard or garden I am carried on the arm, I believe, of my father; there was a group of grown-ups, my mother among them, and the group was slowly walking in the orchard, it seems toward the house.

The importance of heart health became very real for me when my father died of heart disease seven years ago. Having experienced the loss first hand, I am inspired to do everything I can to break the cycle and prevent families from losing loved ones to this preventable disease.