L. Ron (La Fayette Ron) Hubbard

Born in Tilden, Nebraska, in 1911, he built an early writing career in the fast-moving world of pulp magazines, publishing adventure, western, and science-fiction stories in the 1930s and 1940s. That background as a high-output storyteller shaped the energetic, cliffhanger style that many readers still associate with his fiction.

In 1950, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health brought him broad public attention. The ideas in that book became the foundation for Scientology, the movement he went on to establish and lead, making him far more widely known as a religious founder than as a novelist.

He died in 1986 in California. Today, he is remembered in two very different ways: as a remarkably prolific popular writer and as the creator of a movement that has drawn intense loyalty, criticism, and lasting controversy.