Henry FitzGerald Heard (6 October 1889 – 14 August 1971), commonly called Gerald Heard, was a British-born American historian, science writer and broadcaster, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher. He wrote many articles and over 35 books. Heard was a guide and mentor to numerous well-known people from the 1940s through the 1960s, including Aldous Huxley, Henry Luce, Clare Boothe Luce, and Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. His work was a forerunner of, and influence on, the consciousness development movement that has spread in the Western world since the 1960s. Source: Wikipedia (en)