Ian Stevenson

Ian Pretyman Stevenson (1918-2007) was a Canadian-born physician and psychiatrist who spent most of his academic career in the United States. He founded and directed the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, a unit devoted to the study of paranormal phenomena. He is best known for his research into reincarnation, which he approached with the methods of a clinician and which remains deeply divisive.

He grew up in Ottawa, in a household where theosophy was present, and studied medicine in Scotland and at McGill University, graduating in 1943. After training in psychiatry, he taught at Louisiana State University and in 1957 became chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia. His early work concerned psychosomatic illness, and his challenge to the view that personality is largely fixed in childhood put him at odds with many psychoanalysts.

In the late 1950s he began collecting cases of children who seemed to remember previous lives, without using hypnosis. Funded first by the parapsychologist Eileen J. Garrett and later by the inventor Chester Carlson, he travelled for decades across Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas, eventually amassing around three thousand cases. His book Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation introduced this work to a wide readership.

Stevenson was careful in his claims. He offered no physical mechanism by which personality could survive death, and he admitted that his evidence was not conclusive. Critics questioned his methods and found bias in his conclusions, while supporters regarded him as a serious and rigorous investigator. His work has been carried on by colleagues such as Jim B. Tucker, who continues to study children's memories of past lives.