It was no less than a student of Sigmund Freud’s who opened the next door of discovery to a young L. Ron Hubbard. Moving with his family to Seattle, Washington and then on to the nation’s capital, Ron was befriended by Commander Joseph C. Thompson, the first American officer to study under Freud in Vienna. Recognizing an unusually keen intelligence in the twelve-year-old, the Commander spent several months passing on the substance of Freud’s theories. Although genuinely fascinated with the premise of unconscious behavior, Ron was also left with many unanswered questions.

His father’s naval career provided the next avenue of inquiry. Following an assignment to the island of Guam, the Hubbard family ventured East, and Ron was soon pursuing answers to very fundamental questions in what was then a remote Asia. By the age of nineteen, he had traveled more than a quarter of a million miles, examining the cultures of Java, Japan, India and the Philippines. With the same determination, he had even gained access to forbidden Buddhist lamaseries in the western hills of China.

Returning to the United States in 1929, Ron resumed his formal education and enrolled in George Washington University the following year. There, he studied mathematics, engineering and the then new field of nuclear physics – all providing vital tools for continued research.

To finance his research, Ron embarked upon a literary career in the early 1930s, and soon became one of the most widely read authors of popular fiction. His stories spanned all genres – adventure, mystery, western, science fiction and fantasy – and earned him worldwide recognition. He also scripted screenplays for Hollywood and instructive essays for fellow writers. Yet never losing sight of his primary goal, he continued his mainline research through extensive travel and expeditions to then remote islands in the Caribbean, and off British Columbia and Alaska where he studied among the Tlingit, Haida and Aleut tribes. In all, he examined twenty-one races and cultures while searching for answers to improving conditions. In recognition of this work, he was awarded membership in the famed Explorers Club where he was known as a foremost ethnologist. And throughout all subsequent expeditions he would carry the coveted Explorers Club flag.

With the advent of World War II, he entered the United States Navy as a lieutenant (junior grade) and served as commander of antisubmarine corvettes. Although highly decorated, he was deeply saddened by the inhumanity of that conflict and so more resolved than ever to discover some workable means to better the human condition. To that end, he continued his research even through the darkest years of conflict.

Left partially blind and lame from injuries sustained during combat, he was diagnosed as permanently disabled by 1945 and hospitalized in Oakland, California. By this point, however, he had already formulated his first theories on the human mind and, through application of those theories, was not only able to help fellow servicemen, but also regain his own health. In short, he found that by relieving the mental trauma attendant to injuries, one could effect truly miraculous improvements.

After several more years of intensive work, wherein he applied his techniques to some four hundred individuals, Ron compiled his sixteen years of research into The Original Thesis. Although not immediately published, this work inspired so much enthusiasm among scientific and professional circles that he was soon called upon to further explain the techniques he now termed Dianetics.

The first published article on the subject, entitled “Terra Incognita: The Mind,” appeared in Winter/Spring issue of the Explorers Club Journal, generating still greater enthusiasm and hundreds of inquiring letters. L. Ron Hubbard then commenced the writing of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, the first popular handbook on the human mind expressly written for the man in the street. Dianetics was published on May 9, 1950 and became an immediate bestseller. Moreover, because it offered techniques for self-betterment that anyone could learn and apply.

In constant demand, L. Ron Hubbard was soon crisscrossing the country to meet requests for public lectures and personal instruction in the application of Dianetics. Yet even through that intensely busy summer and autumn of 1950, he did not cease his research – first to perfect the technology with which he had resolved problems of the human mind, and then to examine an even more elusive question: What exactly is life? For as he wrote, “The further one investigated, the more one came to understand that here, in this creature, Homo sapiens, were entirely too many unknowns.”

Although still applying a wholly scientific methodology, the research that followed soon led him into an entirely spiritual realm. In particular, he was examining the life source; the spirit; and as breakthrough after breakthrough was carefully codified through late 1951, the applied religious philosophy of Scientology was born. Offering man a route to new levels of awareness and ability, the first Church of Scientology was established in 1954.

Because Scientology addresses all aspects of life, there is no area of man’s existence that L. Ron Hubbard’s subsequent work did not address. Residing variously in the United States and England, his continued research brought forth solutions to such social ills as declining educational standards and the disintegrating family. Also utilizing the basic tenets of Scientology, he was able to discover remarkable methods of assisting the ill, repairing marriages, bettering relations and, in short, resolving any problem or conflict. And because an understanding of individuals ultimately provides an understanding of groups, he was soon employing Scientology truths to evolve a sane means of administering organizations – work which brought about the expansion of Scientology into a worldwide network.

To continue his research in the ‘60’s, he returned to sea aboard a 3,200-ton research vessel, Apollo. For the next seven years, he again traveled extensively, while devoting his attention to increasingly grave societal problems. Of special note from this period is his Drug Rehabilitation program, recognized by government studies as the world’s most effective. He also developed and refined his revolutionary Study Technology, which has factually led to increased literacy for millions.

Moving to shore in 1975, Ron continued his travels – first from Florida to Washington, DC and Los Angeles before finally settling in a southern California desert community near Palm Springs, his home until 1979. There, he wrote and directed training films while also continuing to search out solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.