In 1939, when Beckmann was 14, his family fled their home in
Prague, Czechoslovakia to escape the
Nazis. From 1942 to 1945, he served in a
Czech squadron of the
Royal Air Force. He worked as a radar mechanic on the newly invented radar systems that helped Britain win the Battle of the Atlantic. He received a
B.Sc. in 1949, a
Ph.D. in 1955, and a
D.Sc. in 1962, all from
Prague's
Czech Academy of Sciences in
electrical engineering. He
defected to the
United States in 1963 and became a professor (later,
emeritus) of
electrical engineering at the
University of Colorado. In the United States, he became acquainted with novelist
Ayn Rand, a contributing editor to a publication devoted to her ideas,
The Intellectual Activist, and a speaker at The Thomas Jefferson School, an intellectual conference of similar purpose. Beckmann was a prolific author; he wrote several electrical engineering textbooks and non-technical works. By 1968, he had founded Golem Press, which published most of his books. The Golem Press books included
The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear (1976), which argued in favor of
nuclear power during the height of the
anti-nuclear movement by making "apples-to-apples" comparisons of the risks of nuclear power with the risks in the same terms (e.g., deaths per terawatt hour) of the alternative power sources. Beckmann also wrote
A History of, documenting the history of the calculation of . The book also expresses opposition to the Roman culture,
Catholicism (and other
religions),
Nazism, and
Communism. He published his own monthly newsletter,
Access to Energy, which since September 1993 has been written by biochemist
Arthur B. Robinson. In 1981, he took early retirement with emeritus status, in order to devote himself fully to what he saw as the defense of science, technology and
free enterprise, through his newsletter,
Access to Energy. He founded the Golem Press in 1967, publishing more than nine books. These included
The History of ,
Einstein Plus Two, and
The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear (with an Introduction by
Edward Teller). He wrote some 60 scientific papers and eight technical books. Beckmann spoke at the 1990 San Francisco Conference of
International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL), where he received a standing ovation for his speech in which he attacked "sham environmentalists". Beckmann was also a frequent participant in
Usenet debates. In them, he claimed to have debunked
Albert Einstein's theory of
special relativity in his book
Einstein Plus Two, as well as in the journal
Galilean Electrodynamics, which he also founded. == Books ==