Gunter Sachs
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Fritz Gunter Sachs (born November 14, 1932 in Mainberg near Schweinfurt) is a German mathematician, photographer and multi-millionaire industrialist. He was a coheir of Fichtel & Sachs.
Gunter's main claim to fame is perhaps that he was a millionaire playboy who was married to Brigitte Bardot from 1966–1969. He is now married to Swedish former model, Mirja Larsson. A trained mathematician and economist, Sachs is better known for his skills as an investor and industrialist, and latterly as head of an institute that researches the claims of astrology. As a young man he became a sportsman, then gained international fame as a documentary film-maker and documentary photographer. He has always been "passionately interested" in astrology and its connection with mathematics/statistics.
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[edit] Astrological research
More recently Sachs made the international newspapers again after he commissioned major research into sun sign astrology using large samples, and came up with results that overturned some prejudices. Sachs set out to test the assumptions of astrologers by gathering a team of scientists and statisticians which, over two years, analysed the lives of nearly one million men and women.
"In every case, there were significant results, way beyond what is explicable through mere coincidence." he is quoted as saying by the Daily Mail newspaper on November 6, 1997.
To facilitate the research he set up the "Institute for the Empirical and Mathematical Examination of the Possible Truth of Astrology in Relation to Human Behaviour". Then, using established statistical techniques and with help from the official statistics office in Switzerland (where the authorities have recorded the date and hour of birth of every citizen since 1875), his team gathered statistics on every aspect of human life.
[edit] Sachs' rules
- The team was to start with no assumptions at all.
- The study must be based exclusively on empirical data.
- Astrologers were not to be consulted.
- The results were to be independently controlled.
Once the data was compiled he brought in a German research expert and two statisticians from Munich University, who checked the figures for distortions. The team's extraordinary findings on thousands of topics can be seen in his book The Astrology File, a bestseller published in Germany in 1997.
Sachs was also very surprised to discover that no government, institution, or university had ever put up the money for basic astrological research. He said that his investigation had cost "less than the price of a luxury car", and contrasted this with the millions squandered around the world by scientists "every day" on what he called "scientific trivialities."
[edit] Criticism
After the preliminary research was published in various articles, Sachs was surprised to receive what he felt was "torrents of abuse and insults" from a number of academics. For example statistician Herbert Basler claimed he had found an abundance of statistical errors in the way the data was interpreted. Psychologist Suitbert Ertel echoed this criticism, but also pointed out that as all the data is tabulated, this would allow the data to be re-analysed in due course by improved methods. Fellow astrologer Peter Niehenke suggested that flaws in Sachs's reasoning made his results meaningless. (Information on critics from [1].)
[edit] References
- Sachs, Gunter: The Astrology File: Scientific Proof of the Link Between Star Signs and Human Behaviour. Orion Books (December 1999). ISBN 0-7528-1789-2
- Elwell, Dennis: Cosmic Loom, 2nd edition 1999. The Urania Trust. ISBN 0-04-133027-7. Discussion and interpretation of some of Gunter Sachs results and related material.
[edit] External links
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sachs, Gunter |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sachs, Fritz Gunter |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 14 November 1932 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mainberg near Schweinfurt |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
