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Nicholas Kollerstrom
* 13. Dezember 1946 in London.
English
Astronomer, academic writer and historian of
science.
ABCD Kollerstrom
*)
is a former honorary research fellow in Science and Technology Studies at University College, London
(UCL), and a former lunar gardening correspondent for the
BBC. He is the author or co-author of a number of books, including Gardening and Planting by the Moon (an annual series beginning 1980), Newton's Forgotten Lunar Theory (2000), Crop Circles (2002), and Terror on the Tube (2009).
Kollerstrom attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge from 1965 until 1968. He graduated in Natural
Sciences, specializing in the history and philosophy of science, after which he worked as a physics
teacher. He received his PhD from UCL in 1995 for a thesis entitled,
"The Achievement of Newton's 1702 Theory of the Moon's Motion." He became an honorary research fellow in Science and Technology Studies at
UCL, and in 1999 received a grant from the Royal Astronomical Society to work on the classification of correspondence related to the British discovery of
Neptune; along with William Sheehan and Craig Waff, he concluded in an article for Scientific American in 2004 that the British had wrongly taken credit for the discovery of the
planet. He has a particular interest in the effect of the sun, moon and planets on plant growth and chemical
reactions.
Previously he served as the BBC's lunar gardening
correspondent. His Gardening and Planting by the Moon
has been published every year since 1980 as an annual series.
ABCDABCD Kollerstrom has been involved in the UK as a political activist regarding issues such as the 1982 sinking of the Belgrano
by the British Navy during the Falklands War, after which he helped set up the Belgrano Action
Group.
In the 2000s Kollerstrom became involved with the 911 Truth Movement ,
and campaigned against the Iraq War.
Kollerstrom
is a member of the New York Academy of
Sciences  .
Concerning the 7 July 2005 London bombings
,
he argues may not have been carried out by the men accused of the attack. Kollerstrom's book on the
subject, 'Terror on the Tube: Behind the Veil of 7/7, An
Investigation'
, was published in April 2009, and he was interviewed by the BBC for its
series, The Conspiracy Files, broadcast in June
2009.
The articles were brought to the university's attention by bloggers. BCDAB He came to public attention in April 2008 when he lost his fellowship with UCL
with immediate effect, after posting what he described as
revisionist material about Auschwitz. UCL
(Head of Department Steve Miller)
announced on 22 April 2008 that it had removed Kollerstrom's honorary fellowship. The college wrote that he had expressed views
"diametrically opposed to the aims, objectives and ethos of UCL, such that we wish to have absolutely no association with them or with their
originator."
BCDAB Kollerstrom's
"The Auschwitz 'Gas Chamber' Illusion"
and "The Walls of Auschwitz"
appeared on a website run by the 'Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust
(CODOH)'
, and a
third, "School trips to Auschwitz,"
was published in March 2008 in Smith's report
, a newsletter and website run by the co-founder of
CODOH, Bradley
Smith . In May 2008,
"The Walls of Auschwitz" appeared on the website of the Iranian government's Press TV, when he gave them an interview at the suggestion of Michèle Renouf
, a British woman known for her involvement with writers accused of Holocaust
denial.
In his articles, he collected the available
documentation on the matter, claiming that only one million Jews died in
the war, and that no Jew was ever killed in a gas chamber. Gas chambers
had operated in Auschwitz only for the purpose of disinfection, and that
the only intentional mass extermination program in the concentration camps
of WW2 was targeted at Germans ... in French and American-run
concentration camps," material he said had been erased from the
history books.
ABCD
In "School trips to Auschwitz," he
wrote: "Let us hope the schoolchildren visitors are properly taught about the elegant swimming-pool at Auschwitz, built by the
inmates, who would sunbathe there on Saturday and Sunday afternoons while watching the water-polo
matches; and shown the paintings from its art class, which still exist; and told about the camp library which had some forty-five thousand volumes for inmates to choose
from, plus a range of periodicals; and the six camp orchestras at Auschwitz/Birkenau, its theatrical
performances, including a children's opera, the weekly camp cinema, and even the special brothel established
there. Let's hope they are shown postcards written from Auschwitz, some of which still
exist, where the postman would collect the mail twice-weekly. Thus the past may not always be
quite, as we were told."
BCDAB
Kollerstrom gave an interview in May 2008 to the Iranian government's Press TV
about the loss of his fellowship. Britain's Index on Censorship
asked Brendan O'Neill
of Spiked and "Unity" of Liberal Conspiracy to comment on the removal of the
fellowship. "Unity" argued that it was justified because of the poor scholarship and lack of
judgment, whereas O'Neill's position was that Kollerstrom was pursuing ideas in his spare time and his dismissal amounted to a witch
hunt . In 2010 historian of science Noel Swerdlow suggested in Isis that three entries Kollerstrom wrote for the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers be
removed. The Jewish Chronicle reported that Kollerstrom saw himself as the victim of a
calumny by bloggers. He said that he had no interest in the Nazi movement, had always belonged to groups like the Green Party, the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament, and the Respect party, and regarded himself as having been accused of a
thought-crime.
BCDAB
Kollerstrom is the author of three entries in the Biographical Encyclopaedia of Astronomers on John
Flamsteed, Isaac Newton, and John Couch Adams. In 2010 Noel Swerdlow in a review in Isis
(journal) called for the publishers to withdraw this work because it contained material by
Kollerstrom. In reply James H. Fetzer attacked Swerdlow for committing the 'ad hominem
fallacy'. The publishers have not withdrawn this work.
BCDAB
Britain's Index on Censorship asked Brendan O'Neill of Spiked and "Unity" of Liberal Conspiracy to comment on Kollerstrom's loss of his
fellowship. Unity argued that it was justified because of the poor scholarship and lack of
judgment, whereas O'Neill's position was that Kollerstrom was pursuing his ideas in his spare time and his dismissal amounted to a witch
hunt. The Jewish Chronicle reported that Kollerstrom saw himself as the victim of a
calumny" by bloggers. Kollerstrom said he had no interest in the Nazi
movement, had always belonged to groups like the Green Party, the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament, and the Respect party, and regarded himself as having been accused of a
thought-crime.
BCDAB
In 2014 he published 'Breaking the Spell' [Den Bann brechen]
detailing at length his view of the Holocaust.
-------------------------
*) Der Artikel „Kollerstrom“ existiert in der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia
nicht.
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