Perakh was born in 1924 in
Kiev, Ukraine. On August 28, 1958 Perakh (then Popereka), who at the time had been the head of a department in Kazakh Agricultural University in
Almaty (then Alma-Ata) and K.S.Frusin (department assistant) were sentenced for "badmouthing" the Soviet government and for spreading leaflets calling to vote against candidates in the then forthcoming elections to the
Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Some of Perakh's short stories were inspired by his stay in the
gulag. In 2003, Perakh published
Unintelligent Design (Prometheus Books, ), a book that is critical of
Intelligent Design, and he is particularly
skeptical of some of the arguments proposed by
William Dembski, which he states are
pseudomathematical. He also wrote critically of
Old Earth creationist astronomer
Hugh Ross, and has responded to claims by
Jonathan Wells that the lack of published research by
creationists contradicting the prevailing scientific consensus is due to a
conspiracy he likens to
Lysenkoism in the former
USSR. Perakh was also interested in
Bible codes, which he believed are ridiculous. Perakh's other published books include a technical volume on the subject of
thin films, which has been translated into eight languages, and the
novel Man in a Wire Cage (originally titled by the author "Train in a Wire Cage" but changed by the publisher) (1988, ). His website also has a section on Russian oral jokes (
anekdoty) and short stories he has written in
English and
Russian. Perakh died of leukemia on May 7, 2013 in his home in Hidden Meadows outside Escondido, California. ==References==