Alexander Imich PhD is, at age , active as president of the Anomalous Phenomena Research Center in New York. He was born in Częstochowa

Czestochowa

Częstochowa is a city in south Poland on the Warta River with 240,027 inhabitants . It has been situated in the Silesian Voivodeship since 1999, and was previously the capital of Częstochowa Voivodeship...

, Poland.

Early war service

Imich states that as a 15 year old schoolboy he, together with the rest of his class, joined the Polish forces fighting the Russians and Bolsheviks in 1918. His older brother served as instructor in the automobile division, so young Imich learned to drive trucks for the army until the Bolshevik forces were pushed back and Imich went back to school.

Academic career

He earned his PhD in zoology

Zoology

Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

 at the Jagiellonian University

Jagiellonian University

The Jagiellonian University was established in 1364 by Casimir III the Great in Kazimierz . It is the oldest university in Poland, the second oldest university in Central Europe and one of the oldest universities in the world....

, Kraków

Kraków

Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...

, in 1929 but as he could not find an academic position in zoology, he switched to chemistry. During the 1920s and 1930s he did some research on a medium, Matylda, for the Polish Society for Psychical Research. He published a report in 1932 in a German journal, Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie, but all of the notes and photos from the research that wasn't published were lost during World War II.

World War II

During World War II, Imich and his wife Wela fled to Soviet Białystok, where he was employed as a chemist. The couple were later interned in a labor camp for the duration of the war due to their refusal to accept Soviet citizenship. They were eventually freed and chose to emigrate to the U.S. in 1952, as almost all of their Polish relatives and friends had died in the war.

In the United States from 1952

After a long career as a consultant chemist, he retired in New York. After his wife Wela died in 1986, Imich took up his lifelong interest in parapsychology again, giving out the Imich prize for parapsychology research for several years until he got economic problems. He has written numerous papers for journals in the field and edited a book, "Incredible Tales of the Paranormal" which was published by Bramble Books in 1995. He started the Anomalous Phenomena Research Center in 1999, trying to find a way to produce "The Crucial Demonstration", the goal of which is to demonstrate the reality of paranormal phenomena to mainstream scientists and the general public.