William Farnsworth Loomis

William Farnsworth Loomis—“Farnie”—was not an outstanding mountaineer, but his life was varied and rich, After a successful career as a stockbroker, his father had established a unique investigative laboratory in Tuxedo, N.Y., where Farnie probably drew his first inspirations in science. He graduated from Harvard College, took his medical degree at Cornell, and then set up his own research laboratory in Connecticut, where for years he studied the ultimate causes of cancer, using tiny plant-animals as subjects. He moved to Brandeis for further training in chemistry, later becoming associate professor, and while there published (among many other papers) an unusual epidemiologic study of the distribution of rickets. Unsatisfied as always, he then took up psychiatry, and wrote a challenging book The God Within which probed unexplored regions of the human spirit. Farnie’s experience in Asia led him logically into the OSS under “Wild Bill” Donovan, but he seldom spoke of his adventure behind the Japanese lines in China, nor of his work with the famous Count Ilya Tolstoi. He followed Tolstoi later into enthusiasm for Korzybski’s new science of Semantics, which must later have influenced his thinking in psychiatry.