Robert Ettinger

Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger (December 4, 1918 – legal death July 23, 2011) was an American academic who is known as "the father of cryonics". He wrote the book The Prospect of Immortality (1962), giving birth to cryonics movement. Already in 1948, he had published a cryonics-related short story called The Penultimate Trump. He also wrote the books Man into Superman (1972), and Youniverse (2009).

He founded the Cryonics Society of Michigan (now the Immortalist Society) in 1967 and served as its first president. He founded the Cryonics Institute (CI) in 1976, and served as its president until 2003 (Andrea Foote was the president briefly in 1994). He legally died of natural causes in 2011, and was cryopreserved by CI, becoming CI's 106th patient. His mother (Rhea), his first wife (Elaine), and his second wife (Mae) have also been cryopreserved. Robert had two children with Elaine: David (born 1951) and Shelley (born 1954).