Nicholas Kollerstrom

Nicholas Kollerstrom
Born	(1946-12-13) 13 December 1946
Nationality	British
Education	MA, University of Cambridge (Natural Sciences, 1968) PhD, University College London (Science and Technology, 1995)
Occupation(s)	Writer, historian of science

Nicholas Kollerstrom (born 13 December 1946) is an English writer and historian of science. Formerly an honorary research fellow at University College London (UCL) and BBC lunar gardening correspondent, he is the author of several 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 has been involved in a variety of issues as a political activist. He helped set up the Belgrano Action Group after the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano by the British Navy during the Falklands War in 1982. His book, Terror on the Tube, argues that the 7 July 2005 London bombings were not carried out by the men accused of them. UCL withdrew his fellowship in April 2008 after he posted what he said was revisionist material about the Auschwitz concentration camp on websites known for their Holocaust denial.

Education and career

Kollerstrom attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge from 1965, obtaining his BA in natural sciences in 1968 (promoted to MA in 1973), with a focus on the history and philosophy of science. He worked as a physics teacher before becoming a graduate student in science and technology at University College London (UCL).

Interested in the effect of the sun, moon and planets on plant growth, he served as the BBC's lunar gardening correspondent, and in 1980 his Gardening and Planting by the Moon was published, the first of an annual series. He was awarded his PhD in 1995 for a thesis entitled The Achievement of Newton's "Theory of the Moon's Motion" of 1702. UCL also awarded him an honorary research fellowship.

In 1999 Kollerstrom received a grant from the Royal Astronomical Society to work on the classification of correspondence related to the British discovery of Neptune, and in an article in Scientific American in 2004 concluded that the British had wrongly taken credit for it. In 2003 he wrote in BMC Psychiatry about the effect of the moon on human behaviour.

Political activism

Overview

Kollerstrom has been active in political campaigns in the UK since the 1980s. In 1985 he co-founded the London Nuclear Warfare Tribunal, which sought to question the legality of nuclear weapons. The following year he was a founding member of the Belgrano Action Group, set up in protest at the sinking of the Argentine ship, the ARA General Belgrano, by the British Navy during the 1982 Falklands War. The group held an informal public inquiry in November 1986 at Hampstead Town Hall, addressed by Tam Dalyell and Clive Ponting, among others. In 1989 Kollerstrom stood as a Green Party candidate for East Guildford in the Surrey County Council election.

In the 2000s he became involved with the 911 truth movement and opposition to the Iraq War. As a member of the Institute for Law and Peace, he co-founded the Legal Inquiry Steering Group in 2002, a citizens' tribunal that challenged the war's legality. In 2006 he appeared in a video by David Shayler, in which he argued that the men accused of the 7 July 2005 London bombings had not carried out the attack. During his research into the bombing, Kollerstrom discovered that the train to London the bombers were at first said to have travelled on that morning had been cancelled, which led the government to correct the official account. His 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 that year for its series, The Conspiracy Files. On September 30 2014, he handed himself into Scotland Yard.

Holocaust denial controversy

UCL removed Kollerstrom's honorary fellowship in April 2008 after articles of his appeared on Holocaust denial websites. One was published in June 2007 on a website run by the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), and another in March 2008 in Smith's report, an online newsletter published by the co-founder of CODOH, Bradley Smith. The articles were brought to UCL's attention by bloggers who had made inquiries about Kollerstrom because of his views on the London bombings.

In the first article Kollerstrom wrote that one million Jews had died in the Holocaust, not six million, that 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." This material, he said, had been "erased from the history books." In the second article he wrote that Auschwitz had had art classes and a well-stocked library for inmates, as well as an elegant swimming pool where inmates would sunbathe at weekends while watching water-polo matches.

The 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, while O'Neill said 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, because Kollerstrom had written three articles for the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (2007) – on John Couch Adams, John Flamsteed and Isaac Newton – the publishers should withdraw the book and replace those entries.

The Jewish Chronicle reported that Kollerstrom saw himself as the victim of a "calumny" by bloggers. He 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 believed he had been accused of a "thought-crime." He gave an interview in May 2008 to the Iranian government's Press TV about the loss of the fellowship.

In 2014 in Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust: Myth & Reality he continues to question the generally-accepted view of the Holocaust, restating arguments from chemical analysis and referring to British intelligence decryptions from 1942-3 to argue that the authorities at Auschwitz were using Zyklon B to try to prevent deaths from Typhus rather than to exterminate people. He states that "the British-American war-myths from Nuremberg are toxic to the soul."

Selected works

Books

• with Simon Best (1980). Lunar Planting Manual 1980-81. W Foulsham & Co Ltd. ISBN 0-572-01059-1
• (1980). Gardening and Planting by the Moon, an annual series.
• (1982). Lead on the Brain: A Plain Guide to Britain's No. 1 Pollutant, Wildwood House. ISBN 0-7045-0476-6
• (1984). Astrochemistry: A Study of Metal-planet Affinities, Emergence Press. ISBN 0-946937-00-1
• with George Farebrother (eds.) (1988). The Unnecessary War: Proceedings of the Belgrano Inquiry, November 7/8th 1986, The Belgrano Action Group, Spokesman Press.
• (1993). The Metal-Planet Relationship: A Study of Celestial Influence, Borderland Sciences Research Foundation. ISBN 0-945685-14-9
• with Mike O'Neill (1994). The Eureka Effect: Astrology of Scientific Discovery, Auriel, 1994.
• (1995). The Achievement of Newton's 'Theory of the Moon's Motion' of 1702, PhD dissertation, University of London.
• (2000). Newton's Forgotten Lunar Theory, Green Lion Press. ISBN 1-888009-08-X
• (2002). Crop Circles: The Hidden Form, Wessex Books. ISBN 1-903035-11-2
• with George Farebrother (eds.) (2003). The Case against War: The Essential Legal Inquiries, Opinions and Judgements Concerning War in Iraq, Legal Inquiry Steering Group, with a preface by Nicholas Kollerstorm and Mark Levine (available here).
• with Nicholas Campion (eds.) (2004). Galileo's Astrology, HR Wallingford Ltd. ISBN 1-898485-08-9
• (2009). Terror on the Tube: Behind the Veil of 7/7, An Investigation, Progressive Press. ISBN 1-61577-007-0
• (2009). Venus, the Path of Beauty, New Alchemy Press.
• (2103). Farmer's Moon, New Alchemy Press.
• (2013). Interface: Astronomical Essays for Astrologers, New Alchemy Press.
• (2013). Eureka: The Celestial Pattern at Times of Historic Inspiration, New Alchemy Press.
• (2014). Breaking the Spell. The Holocaust: Myth & Reality, Castle Hill Publishers.

Articles

• (1980). "The Lawther Report: Whitewashing Leaded Petrol", The Ecologist, 10(6/7), July/Aug/Sept, pp. 246–249.
• (1991). "Crabtree's Venus-Transit Measurement", Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 32, 1991, p. 51.
• (1992). "Thomas Simpson and 'Newton's method of approximation': An enduring myth", British Journal for the History of Science, 25, pp. 347–354.
• with Bernard D. Yallop (1995). "Flamsteed's Lunar Data 1692–95, Sent to Newton," Journal for the History of Astronomy, 26, pp. 237–246.
• (1999). "The Path of Halley's Comet, and Newton's Late Apprehension of the Law of Gravity," Annals of Science, 56(4), pp. 331–356.
• (2000). "How Newton inspired China's calendar," Astronomy & Geophysics, 41(5), pp. 5.21-5.23.
• (2002). "Newton, Halley and Uranus", Astrological Journal, August.
• (2003). "Galileo as Believer", Culture and Cosmos, 7(1), Spring/Summer.
• with Beverly Steffert (2003). "Sex difference in response to stress by lunar month: A pilot study of four years' crisis-call frequency", BMC Psychiatry, 3:20, 10 December.
• (2003). "Recovering the Neptune files," Astronomy & Geophysics, 2003, 44(5), pp. 5.23-5.24.
• with William Sheehan and Craig B. Waff (2004). "The Case of the Pilfered Planet: Did the British steal Neptune?", Scientific American, 291(6), December, pp. 92–99.
• (2004). "Galileo's first trial", Astronomy Now, 18(7), pp. 33–36.
• (2004). "Galileo and the new star", Astronomy Now, 18(10), pp. 58–59.
• (2004). "Lunar Effect on Thoroughbred Mare Fertility: An Analysis of 14 Years of Data, 1986–1999," Biological Rhythm Research, 35(4), pp. 317–327.
• (2004). "William Crabtree's Venus transit observation", Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, IAUC196, pp. 34–40. Also in D. W. Kurtz (ed.), Transits of Venus: New Views of the Solar System and Galaxy, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 34ff.
• (2005). "Acropolis Width and Ancient Geodesy", International Journal of Metrology, Oct/Nov/Dec.
• (2006). "John Herschel on the Discovery of Neptune", Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 9(2), pp. 151–158.
• (2007). "Decoding the Antikythera Mechanism", Astronomy Now, 21(3), pp. 32–35.
• (2007). "Adams, John Couch,""Flamsteed, John," and "Newton, Isaac," in Thomas Hockey, et al (eds.), Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, Springer.