Peter A. Sturgeon

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Peter A. Sturgeon (Nov. 22, 1916-July 22, 2005) was the founder of the American branch of Mensa and the older brother of noted American science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon. He fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War as a volunteer with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. After returning to the United States he resigned from the Communist Party in protest at the time of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and associated with the Socialist Workers Party. In 1941 he was drafted, serving as a combat paratrooper in the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team until his discharge in November 1944. After the war he earned a BS degree at New York University and married his wife Ines. He worked as a medical writer in Brooklyn and founded the first American chapter of Mensa in New York in 1960. Early meetings were held at his home in Brooklyn. In 1965 he left the United States, taking a job with the World Health Organization in Switzerland. In 1968 he relocated to Vienna, Austria where he worked for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. He died in Vienna in 2005.

[edit] References

• America Mensa founder dies at 88, UPI, July 27, 2005
• History of USA Mensa at www.us.mensa.org.
• 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team (1998)
• Sturgeon, Theodore. Argyll: A Memoir (1993)
• Carroll, Peter N. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (1994)
• Carroll, Peter N., et al., eds. The Good Fight Continues: World War II Letters From the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (2006)

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