L. Ron Hubbard - University and Explorations

University and Explorations

Hubbard studied civil engineering during his two years at George Washington University at the behest of his father, who "decreed that I should study engineering and mathematics." While he did not graduate from George Washington, his time there subsequently became important because, as George Malko puts it, "many of his researches and published conclusions have been supported by his claims to be not only a graduate engineer, but 'a member of the first United States course in formal education in what is called today nuclear physics.'" However, a Church of Scientology biography describes him as "never noted for being in class" and says that he "thoroughly detest his subjects." He earned poor grades, was placed on probation in September 1931 and dropped out altogether in the fall of 1932.

Scientology accounts say that he "studied nuclear physics at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., before he started his studies about the mind, spirit and life" and Hubbard himself stated that he "set out to find out from nuclear physics a knowledge of the physical universe, something entirely lacking in Asian philosophy." His university records indicate that his exposure to "nuclear physics" consisted of one class in "atomic and molecular phenomena" for which he earned an "F" grade.

Scientologists claim he was more interested in extracurricular activities, particularly writing and flying. According to church materials, "he earned his wings as a pioneering barnstormer at the dawn of American aviation" and " recognized as one of the country's most outstanding pilots. With virtually no training time, he takes up powered flight and barnstorms throughout the Midwest." His airman certificate, however, records that he qualified to fly only gliders rather than powered aircraft and gave up his certificate when he could not afford the renewal fee.

During Hubbard's final semester he organized an expedition to the Caribbean for "fifty young gentleman rovers" aboard the schooner Doris Hamlin commencing in June 1932. The aims of the "Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition" were stated as being to explore and film the pirate "strongholds and bivouacs of the Spanish Main" and to "collect whatever one collects for exhibits in museums". It ran into trouble even before it left the port of Baltimore: Ten participants quit and storms blew the ship far off course to Bermuda. Eleven more members of the expedition quit there and more left when the ship arrived at Martinique. With the expedition running critically short of money, the ship's owners ordered it to return to Baltimore.

Hubbard blamed the expedition's problems on the captain: "the ship's dour Captain Garfield proved himself far less than a Captain Courageous, requiring Ron Hubbard's hand at both the helm and the charts." Specimens and photographs collected by the expedition are said by Scientology accounts to have been acquired by the University of Michigan, the U.S. Hydrographic Office, an unspecified national museum and the New York Times, though none of those institutions have any record of this. Hubbard later wrote that the expedition "was a crazy idea at best, and I knew it, but I went ahead anyway, chartered a four-masted schooner and embarked with some fifty luckless souls who haven't stopped their cursings yet." He called it "a two-bit expedition and financial bust," which resulted in some of its participants making legal claims against him for refunds.

After leaving university Hubbard traveled to Puerto Rico on what the Church of Scientology calls the "Puerto Rican Mineralogical Expedition". Scientologists claim he "made the first complete mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico" as a means of "augmenting his pay with a mining venture", during which he "sluiced inland rivers and crisscrossed the island in search of elusive gold" as well as carrying out "much ethnological work amongst the interior villages and native hillsmen". Hubbard's unofficial biographer Russell Miller writes that neither the United States Geological Survey nor the Puerto Rican Department of Natural Resources have any record of any such expedition.

According to Miller, Hubbard traveled to Puerto Rico in November 1932 after his father volunteered him for the Red Cross relief effort following the devastating 1932 San Ciprian hurricane. In a 1957 lecture Hubbard said that he had been "a field executive with the American Red Cross in the Puerto Rico hurricane disaster." According to his own account, Hubbard spent much of his time prospecting unsuccessfully for gold. Towards the end of his stay on Puerto Rico he appears to have done some work for a Washington, D.C. firm called West Indies Minerals Incorporated, accompanying a surveyor in an investigation of a small property near the town of Luquillo, Puerto Rico. The survey was unsuccessful. A few years later, Hubbard wrote:

{{quote|Harboring the thought that the Conquistadores might have left some gold behind, I determined to find it ... Gold prospecting in the wake of the Conquistadores, on the hunting grounds of the pirates in the islands which still reek of Columbus is romantic, and I do not begrudge the sweat which splashed in muddy rivers, and the bits of khaki which have probably blown away from the thorn bushes long ago ...
After a half year or more of intensive search, after wearing my palms thin wielding a sample pack, after assaying a few hundred sacks of ore, I came back, a failure.