Richard L. Thompson

Richard L. Thompson also known as Sadaputa Dasa (February 4, 1947 - September 18, 2008) was a mathematician, academic, author and American Vaishnava. He published several books and articles, including Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race (1993), co-authored with Michael Cremo. In particular, this work has been widely-criticised for pseudoanthropological claims that have been described as "Vedic Creationism". Thompson's dissertation, Equilibrium states of thin energy shells, was chosen for publication by the Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society (No. 150) for being "correct, new, and significant." He specialized in probability theory and statistical mechanics. Thompson was a founding member of the "Bhaktivedanta Institute", an ISKCON academic think tank. He died on September 18, 2008.
Forbidden Archeology
In 1993 Thompson and Michael Cremo co-wrote Forbidden Archeology. The book attracted vehement criticism as a pseudoanthropological analysis proposing antievolutionism from a Hindu perspective. The work sought to debunk the existing palaeoanthropological consensus that anatomically modern hominids emerged of the order of a hundred thousand years ago, through a nine hundred page catalog of historical findings over the last two centuries which would appear to support a Vedic creationist hypothesis that human beings in a modern form could have existed on Earth far deeper into antiquity. The book argues that the scientific establishment either ignores or suppresses anomalous evidence too far outside its contemporary paradigm. Meera Nanda in the Indian magazine Frontline called Cremo and Thompson "the intellectual force driving Vedic creationism".
In 1996 Thompson and Cremo appeared on the NBC special The Mysterious Origins of Man, similarly criticized by the scientific community.
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Selected papers and other professional works
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