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- Bio: Ralph Willard came to New York on December 8, 1922 on the S.S. Constantinople from Constantinople, Turkey. His occupation was a chemist. The ship's register has his name as Rafael Soukeassian of Armenian ethnicity. (Many in Georgia were Armenian.)
- His petition for citizenship, signed by Ralph in 1928 as Raphael Sookyassian, asked for his name to be changed to Ralph S. Willard. Immigrants often used the first letter of their ethnic surname as a middle initial. So he became Ralph S. (Sookyassian) Willard.
- He was married to Janet Frantz in Enid, OK in 1926. They had a daughter born in Hollywood in 1928. By 1940 he was listed in the census as living in Los Angeles, and divorced. The census also listed him as an experimental chemist with his own laboratory and office.
- Family legend has it that his father was a member of the Russian government, in Georgia, USSR during the Russian "Revolution." Ralph and his sister were smuggled out of the country, in a casket, on a ship. This is a story I'm planning to investigate.
From Wikipedia: The Romanov Family established their residence in Tblisi in 1918. In 1921, the Democratic Republic of Georgia was occupied by the Soviet Bolshevik forces from Russia. This timing matches, since Ralph came to the USA in 1922.
- On May 26, 1948, he married Bernice Esther Strand. They had no children.
- Ralph was an interesting man. He had multiple degrees: a PHD in chemistry, an MA in engineering, and a couple more.
- Ralph was a chemist and had a research business based on Chemistry, etc. He was also into "Life on other planets" and was one of the first scientists to work on freezing the human body to preserve it for future medical procedures.
- From "Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking:" "In 1935, Time Magazine featured the predictions of Ralph S. Willard, a Hollywood chemist who claimed to be able to freeze monkeys and resuscitate them. Willard suggested that this process could be used with prisoners because it was cheaper than jail, the unemployed, who could be kept frozen until the economy produced more jobs, and even the depressed, who could remain in the freezer until a cure was found. By the way, it is clear that "Willard was a humbug" who disappeared into science fiction history."
- S. B. Harris p.55
- On August 10, 1935, Dr. Ralph S. Willard is on the FRONT page of the "Chicago Daily Tribune" in an article entitled "Agrees to Die in "Freezer" to Test Death." The article tells about Dr. Willard bringing a monkey back to life after being frozen and a young man had offered to be the first human to do it because he believed it would work. Actually, 180 men had applied to be the first person frozen and revived. The experiment never took place.
- Dr. Ralph S. Willard is listed in the credits as the technical adviser for the Boris Karloff movie, "The Man with Nine Lives" which was filmed and released in 1940. Summary: A medical researcher visits the deserted home of a pioneer in cryogenic science who disappeared 10 years earlier and finds him frozen in ice but still alive. Seems like a good fit for Uncle Ralph's passion.
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1903 - 1971 (68 år)
