about tom slick

Visionary philanthropist and entrepreneur Tom Slick founded the Mind Science Foundation in 1958. Shortly before his untimely death in a plane crash only four years later, he wrote:

I regard the creation of the Mind Science Foundation as the most important undertaking of my life and I plan to devote most of my time to it. I feel that the human mind has tremendous unexplored potential and I want to go about the discovery of that potential in a scientific way.

During his action-packed life, Tom Slick parlayed the wealth and robust work ethic inherited from his father, known as the “King of the Wildcatters,” and, joined with his native genius, helped build Slick Oil Company into a multi-million dollar company in the early 1960s. Tom was possessed of a prescient vision of the “power of the possible,” founding Texas Biomedical Research Institute in 1941, followed by Southwest Research Institute a few years later.

An intrepid explorer, Tom sponsored two expeditions to Nepal in the late 1950s, hoping to find the Yeti in order to scientifically determine whether it was a legitimate ‘missing link’ between Homo sapiens and earlier primates.

While he didn’t find the Yeti, Tom returned from his expeditions in Nepal with a profound desire to explore the unknown mysteries of the mind, inspired by the powers of the mind he observed in the yogis and holy men he encountered. That desire inspired his creation of the Mind Science Foundation.