biography
| name: |
Hubbard, L(afayette) Ron(ald)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1911–86)
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| biography:
| Science-fiction writer and cult leader, born in Tilden, Nebraska, USA. He studied at George Washington University (1930–4), and then pursued a variety of activities, including exploring, but mostly concentrated on his writing, usually science fiction (often under pen names such as Winchester Remington Colt, Eldron, Frederick Englehardt, Michael Keith, and Tom Esterbrook). He attended Princeton (1945), and in 1950 published Dianetics, a system of attaining mental health that he developed. Its success led to his founding of the Church of Scientology (1954), and as this began to attract increasing numbers of believers, he began to receive as much as $100 million a year in sales and donations. By 1966 he had taken refuge on a large yacht and became increasingly elusive in his whereabouts and motives. In 1980 the Internal Revenue Service challenged the tax-exempt status of his ‘church of scientology’. Rumours continued to surround him in his final years, as his followers regarded him as a brilliant prophet and therapist, and his detractors saw him as a con-man and charlatan. |
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