Jeremi M. F. Wasiutyński (1907-2005)

Jeremi Marie Franciszek Wasiutyński, M.A., D.Sc., astrophysicist, depth-psychologist and philosopher, devoted his life to scientific studies and to the development of a cosmological synthesis. After the millennium he published his two main works, The Speech of God and The Solar Mystery, the fruit of more than forty years of intense work. He left several unpublished manuscripts, on various topics and in different languages. A revised and enlarged edition of his biography of Copernicus (in Polish) was published December 2007 in Torun.

Wasiutyński was born 5 October 1907 in Warsaw, Poland, but came to Oslo, Norway as a student in 1938, became a Norwegian citizen in 1946 and spent the rest of his life there. From 1964 he held the Norwegian State scholarship for his distinguished work as a popular scientist. He died in Oslo 8 April 2005, and is buried in Poland, at the Powazki burial ground in Warsaw. In Norway Wasiutyński has inspired artists like the writers Axel Jensen and Nils Johan Rud, the poet Stein Mehren and the painter Frans Widerberg, who were all among his friends.

Jeremi Wasiutyński was the son of Professor Aleksander Feliks Hieronim Marceli Wasiutyński (1859-1944) - a famous expert on rail communication who introduced modern methods of track laying - and Klotylda Stefania Eufemia Romocka (1874-1963), the daughter of a Polish poet. After being tutored privately in Moscow until the age of nine, while his father was supervising the building of the Trans-Sibirian railroad, Wasiutyński attended the Masowian gymnasium in Warsaw, receiving a gold medal at his graduation in 1925. In his spare time, Wasiutyński read widely, and wrote poetry and fiction, as well as film scenarios, one of which was published in his friend Stefan Themerson's magazine Film artystyczny. Later he studied mathematics, physics, astronomy, philosophy, and psychology at Warsaw University and in 1930 took his MA degree on a study of the variable star AK Herculis.

In 1938, his book Kopernik, Twórca Nowego Nieba (i.e. "Copernicus: The Creator of the New Heavens"), an extensive biography of Copernicus, was awarded a prize as the best Polish book of the year by the magazine Wiadomosci Literackich. A German translation of the book was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II.

Wasiutyński moved to Oslo, Norway in 1938, to continue his studies under the famous Norwegian astrophysicist Svein Rosseland, became a Norwegian citizen in 1946, and in the same year received his doctorate in astrophysics from the University of Oslo with the dissertation Studies in Hydrodynamics and Structure of Stars and Planets.

Dr. Wasiutyński was then offered chairs in astrophysics and geophysics at several universities in Europe, but declined, having decided to devote himself to the search for that synthesis of knowledge which he felt both possible and imperative in our times. In the following years he therefore earned his living by writing popular science in Norwegian weeklies, as well as writing a number of popular scientific works in Norwegian, among them Verden og geniet 1943/44 and Universet 1963 (reprinted 1965). Both books became immensely popular and inspired many of their young readers to embark on a scientific career. In 1964 he was awarded the Norwegian State Scholarship for his achievement in this field, and was thus able to work more systematically on his synthesis of objective, subjective, psychological and physical experience.

His efforts finally resulted in the work The Speech of God, From the Meta-Cosmic Beginnings to the Forthcoming Terrestrial Crisis, In an Attempt at Human Understanding (Oslo 2002), which presents his systematic reconstruction of reality.

Alternately with The Speech of God, Wasiutyński had been working on another book, published in 2003 as The Solar Mystery: An Inquiry Into the Temporal and the Eternal Background of the Rise of Modern Civilization.

The Solar Mystery is, in the author's own words, "a fruit of the interaction between the author’s systematic studies of the spontaneous symbolism of creative processes in art and his early engagement in the so-called ‘Copernican revolution’ of the High Renaissance, resulting in the unexpected discovery that the ‘revolution’ in question concerned actually all the central domains of human life, but that its truly revolutionary scope was kept, and remained, secret, leading thereby gradually to catastrophic consequences for the entire modern civilization".

It has been argued that Wasiutyński's writings are often too subtle and indirect, and that his most important points are usually hidden or only presented implicitly in the text. However, this is exactly his point: some truths should not be expressed directly – neither in our time nor during the Renaissance – but preferably emerge as a result of having been deeply absorbed in the text itself.

Wasiutyński's achievement may very well be said to be exceptional, also in an international context. In our time, this kind of life-long, purposeful search for unity and coherence of our existence, in combination with such persistent dedication and such versatility and depth of mental capacity and knowledge, is seldom found.

Most of his unpublished manuscripts will be printed in book form or made available through this homepage. His former secretary, Ms. Sissel Klokkhammer, is in charge of this work.

Jeremi Wasiutyński has been portrayed by Norwegian photographers Morten Krogvold and Gro Jarto, and by film makers Piotr Kuzinski, Jan Christian Mollestad and Monika Górska.