Ted Litovitz, a physics professor at Catholic University in Washington DC, died on May 1 after a long battle with kidney cancer. He was 82.
The silver-tongued EMF researcher leaves a mixed legacy. Though Litovitz was a champion among those who believed he had documented the existence of low-level magnetic field effects, some of his experiments were never reliably replicated and remained controversial. Much of his later career was devoted to showing that an incoherent or noisy signal can block the biological effects of a 60 Hz field.
Litovitz was awarded a number of patents, which he then licensed to the EMX Corp. EMX products failed to win acceptance however. In 2001, Litovitz succeeded in convincing Peter Angelos, the rich Baltimore lawyer, to give him $500,000 for biomedical studies —this was one of the many times when research funds were extremely scarce in the U.S.
His funeral is being held today in Falls Church, VA.
May 6
Read the Washington Post obit.