Deepak Chopra is an Indian-American author, public speaker and physician. He is a prominent alternative medicine advocate and is described as a "controversial New-Age guru". Through his several dozen books and videos, he has become one of the best-known and wealthiest figures in the holistic-health movement. Chopra obtained his medical degree in India before emigrating in 1970 to the United States, where he specialized in endocrinology and became Chief of Staff at the New England Memorial Hospital. In the 1980s he began practicing transcendental meditation and in 1985 resigned his position at NEMH to establish the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center. Chopra left the TM movement in 1994 and founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing. Chopra states that, combining principles from Ayurveda and mainstream medicine, his approach to health incorporates ideas about the mind-body relationship, a belief in teleology in nature and a belief in the primacy of consciousness over matter ? that "consciousness creates reality". He claims that his practices can extend the human lifespan and treat chronic disease. [More at Wikipedia]

October 22nd, 1946 in New Delhi (Age 78)