Willis W. Harman (August 16, 1918 – January 30, 1997) was an American engineer, futurist, and author associated with the human potential movement. He was convinced that late industrial civilization faced a period of major cultural crisis which called for a profound transformation of human consciousness. Over a career lasting some four decades, he worked to raise public awareness on the subject through his writings and to foster relevant research through the nonprofit research institute SRI International, the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), and the World Business Academy (WBA). He served as president of IONS for two decades, and he was a cofounder of the WBA. His many books include volumes coauthored with the futurist Howard Rheingold, who put forward similar views, and the mythologist Joseph Campbell. Early life and education Willis W. Harman was born in Seattle, Washington on August 16, 1918. His father was a hydroelectric engineer and his mother was a music teacher. He attended the Western Washington College of Education before moving on to graduate from the University of Washington in 1939 with a BS in electrical engineering. After graduation, he worked for General Electric and then joined the Navy as an electrical officer. He was stationed on the USS Maryland (BB-46) but was ashore at his home near Pearl Harbor during the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. After the end of World War II, Harman received his MS in physics and PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1948. Academic career Harman taught for several years at the University of Florida before joining the Stanford faculty in 1952 to teach electrical engineering and physics. In 1966, his faculty line was transferred from the Department of Electrical Engineering to the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems (since absorbed by the Department of Management Science and Engineering) at the behest of founding chair Bill Linvill. In 1954, he attended a summer seminar on ethics, meditation, and the spiritual life that had a transformative effect on both his thinking and his career. He later said of this experience that it "opened up vast areas I didn't even know were there. It completely changed my concept of what is important in education, and in time led to various activities in the field of humanistic psychology." Harman became convinced that Western culture was facing a spiritual and moral crisis stemming from the ravages of industrialism and its economic logic, which he