Itzhak Bentov

Israeli American engineer, inventor (1923–1979)

Itzhak "Ben" Bentov (also Ben Tov; ; August 9, 1923 – May 25, 1979) was an Israeli American scientist, inventor, mystic and author. His many inventions, including the steerable cardiac catheter, helped pioneer the biomedical engineering industry. He was also an early proponent of what has come to be referred to as consciousness studies and authored several books on the subject. Bentov was killed in the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 shortly after takeoff from Chicago O'Hare Airport in 1979, which remains the worst non terrorism related aviation disaster to have taken place on US soil.

Bentov was born in Humenné, Czechoslovakia (in present day Slovakia), in 1923. During World War II, his parents, his younger brother and sister were killed in Nazi concentration camps. He narrowly escaped being sent to the camps and moved to British Palestine, first living on the Shoval kibbutz in the Negev. Despite not having a university degree, and settled in Massachusetts. He became a naturalized U. S. citizen in 1962.

Bentov had a daughter, Sharona Ben Tov Muir, with his first wife, whom he would divorce. Later he married Ukrainian born sculptor and poet Mirtala Serhiivna Pylypenko Kardinalovska (Kharkiv, 1929), also known as Mirtala Bentov.

Bentov was killed on May 25, 1979, as a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 191 that crashed shortly after takeoff from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. At the time of his death, he was traveling to California where he had been set to present his ideas on science and mysticism to a group of scientists from Japan. He was 55 years old. His daughter, English professor Sharona Ben Tov Muir, wrote a memoir about her father, The Book of Telling: Tracing the Secrets of My Father's Lives in 2005. It was not until after his death that she learned about his life in the Israeli Defense Forces and that he had created Israel's first rocket. Searching for answers as to why he never discussed this part of his life, Muir traveled to Israel and researched his years there.