RANGELEY — Historian of Science James Strick, a professor at Franklin and Marshall College, will give a talk and sign copies of his new book, “Wilhelm Reich, Biologist” at 2 p.m. Friday, July 17, at Rangeley Public Library.

Strick did extensive research on Reich’s laboratory microbiology experiments, both at the Wilhelm Reich Museum in Rangeley and at the Reich Archives at Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Strick has training in microbiology as well as history of science; his earlier books “Sparks of Life” and “The Living Universe,” like this new book, deal with the history of ideas and experiments about the origin of life.

Reich conducted his “bion experiments” in Oslo, Norway from 1936-1939. But the work continued at Orgonon after Reich came to America. His microscopes were extraordinarily high-quality research instruments, and Strick came to the Reich Museum to examine them as part of his research for the new book. That research also took him to archives in Oslo and in many other locations including Rockefeller Foundation Archives.

Given Reich’s years of living in the Rangeley area, and having his laboratory here opened after his death as the Wilhelm Reich Museum, many area residents should find Strick’s reappraisal of Reich’s laboratory experiments of interest. Harvard University Press describes the book as follows:

“Psychoanalyst, political theorist, pioneer of body therapies, prophet of the sexual revolution—all fitting titles, but Wilhelm Reich has never been recognized as a serious laboratory scientist, despite his experimentation with bioelectricity and unicellular organisms. Wilhelm Reich, Biologist is an eye-opening reappraisal of one of twentieth-century science’s most controversial figures—perhaps the only writer whose scientific works were burned by both the Nazis and the U.S. government. Refuting allegations of “pseudoscience” that have long dogged Reich’s research, James Strick argues that Reich’s lab experiments in the mid-1930s represented the cutting edge of light microscopy and time-lapse micro-cinematography and deserve to be taken seriously as legitimate scientific contributions.

Trained in medicine and a student of Sigmund Freud, Reich took to the laboratory to determine if Freud’s concept of libido was quantitatively measurable. His electrophysiological experiments led to his “discovery” of microscopic vesicles (he called them “bions”), which Reich hypothesized were instrumental in originating life from nonliving matter. Studying Reich’s laboratory notes from recently opened archives, Strick presents a detailed account of the bion experiments, tracing how Reich eventually concluded he had discovered an unknown type of biological radiation he called ‘orgone.’ The bion experiments were foundational to Reich’s theory of cancer and later investigations of orgone energy.

Reich’s experimental findings and interpretations were considered discredited, but not because of shoddy lab technique, as has often been claimed. Scientific opposition to Reich’s experiments, Strick contends, grew out of resistance to his unorthodox sexual theories and his Marxist political leanings.”