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From: "Peter_McCrae" <>
Subject: BELOFF: John Beloff--d.1/6/2006>UK
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 15:50:10 +0100


The Scotsman online 26/7/2006


John Beloff
Scholar and lecturer in parapsychology
Born: 19 April, 1920, in London.
Died: 1 June, 2006, in Edinburgh, aged 86.


JOHN Beloff was a respected and admired member of the Department of
Psychology at Edinburgh University for 40 years, but he also nurtured and
advanced the academic study of parapsychology. His research and writings
into the paranormal phenomena encouraged generations of students at
Edinburgh to do further research and bring international renown to the
department. Beloff was a handsome man with a humble and generous spirit who
hated fuss and bother. He was a keen collector of paintings, which he hung
with justifiable pride in his house in the Grange. Beloff had a keen,
delightfully self-deprecating, sense of humour.

John Beloff was the youngest son of Russian Jews who had settled in
Hampstead before the First World War. His brother Max (Lord Beloff) was to
become a leading academic and a Fellow of All Souls; John, in later life,
often felt himself over shadowed by his brother. He did an apprenticeship
with an architects firm but was clearly unhappy. During the war, Beloff
served in the army and read extensively about extrasensory perception (ESP)
and when invalided out of the army in 1942, he enrolled to study psychology
at London University. After lectureships at Illinois and Belfast he joined,
in 1961, the Department of Psychology at Edinburgh University where he
remained until he retired in 1985.

While his career as a writer and authority on ESP burgeoned, Beloff's
professional life was marked by years of distinguished teaching and
research. He was a scholar and teacher with an international reputation and
served as president of the Psychical Research Society in 1974. He had an
exceptionally clear mind that marshalled an argument with consummate
conviction. He relied on data, careful study and reason. This scholastic
clarity and his incisive teaching encouraged numerous PhD students to do
research into parapsychology.

Indeed when his friend Arthur Koestler died, in 1983, Beloff was one of the
executors of his will. Koestler's entire fortune was donated to found a
chair of parapsychology and Beloff was involved in finding a university that
would accept such a controversial subject. The chair came to Edinburgh where
the research continues to this day and Beloff's early work undoubtedly laid
the foundations that has gained the department its international reputation.
Beloff was always generous in his praise of his graduate students - he
dedicated his biography to their work over the years: "I came increasingly
to depend of my graduate students for their experimental output of our
parapsychology unit," he wrote.

The experience regarding the Koestler legacy brought home to Beloff the
distrust and suspicion that the public (and some fellow colleagues)
associated with parapsychology. He graciously credited the then principal at
Edinburgh University, John Burnett, with the foresight in bringing the chair
to Edinburgh. In fact, Beloff's shrewd underplaying of the subject
throughout his teaching career - never denying his own deep personal
commitment - ensured that the first Koestler professor was appointed just as
Beloff was retiring.

In fact, Robert Morris, a young American, was a most suitable appointment
and pleased Beloff greatly. He had never been granted a chair but the head
of department, Robert Grieve, at Edinburgh made him an "honorary fellow" and
Beloff remained active within the university. He was a familiar and popular
figure around academic circles in thecapital and always made himself
available as a cheerful and wise consultant. He also wrote extensively in
specialised magazines.

Beloff, apart from the medical periodicals, wrote three influential books.
The Existence of the Mind (1962) explored the philosophy of the brain;
Psychological Sciences (1973) was a much-admired explanation of psychology
while in The Relentless Question (1990) he defended his dualist views that
were rejected by many of his colleagues. "I am," Beloff wrote, "a
conservative thinker."

Beloff was a man of contrasts. He was a committed atheist yet believed in
the possibility of survival after bodily death and defended the existence of
psychic phenomena (telepathy, clairvoyance and communication with the dead)
without any personal experience. "Have I," Beloff asked, "some special need
to believe? By the laws of cognitive dissonance the longer you commit
yourself to some cause and the more effort you devote to it the harder it
becomes to renounce it."

He was an ardent supporter of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Scotland
and remained a modest and courteous man all his life. "Such adventures as
have come my way have been no more than adventures of the mind," he wrote.
In fact, he enjoyed a most happy home life with Halla, his wife of over 50
years who was one of his former students. He described her "as the most
important person in my life". She and their son and daughter survive him.






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