L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986)
The founder of Dianetics and Scientology, Hubbard was born in Tilden, Nebraska on March 13, 1911. Shortly after, his family moved to Helena, Montana, which is where Hubbard spent his childhood.
Hubbard’s father was posted to a US Naval Base on Guam, which gave Ron the opportunity to travel in Asia and the South Pacific during his teens. These travels opened him to new ways of looking at the world he hadn’t been afforded growing up in the US.
L Ron Hubbard made a career as a pulp fiction author during the 1930s. Working under many pseudonyms, he primarily wrote fantasy and science-fiction stories. But he branched out into other genres popular in the pulp magazines of the time—adventures, romance, westerns, mysteries, and more. He was well-known for his fast-paced, high-stakes stories and rubbed elbows with many other renowned authors such as Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.
In May of 1950, he published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (DMSMH). The book became an immediate success and stayed on the best-seller lists for the rest of that year while selling over a half million copies. Readers held “Dianetic parties” in their homes and used the book’s techniques to audit one another. Dianetics has been reprinted many times since then, in dozens of languages.
So many people reached out to L Ron Hubbard in those first years after DMSMH came out he established groups and then more formal organizations.
As Hubbard delved into man’s spiritual aspects, he coined the word ‘Scientology’ and began writing books to describe these spiritual teachings. The first Scientology church was incorporated in 1953 in Camden, New Jersey. Hubbard went on to establish many more churches in multiple countries and wrote many more books, gave hundreds of lectures, and was very active as an auditor, case supervisor, and the leader of the church.
In the late 70’s, Hubbard stepped back from the day-to-day running of things although he continued to be in close contact with officials of the Scientology church. During these last years of his life, he took up fiction writing anew, penning the space opera novel, Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth a ten-volume sci-fi epic. He passed away in January, 1986 at his ranch near Creston, California.
He was survived by his wife Mary Sue Hubbard, and six of his seven children.
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