Famous People Sleeping: R. Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller. Civil engineers everywhere can thank him for geodesic domes and their many applications. He's created numerous other inventions and even has a poly-molecule named after him.

But really, Wikipedia does a far better job of covering him.

He was influential in many ways, and because of his philosphies on life, he's a sort of hero to many. He's an ideal person to fill the role of a polysleeper for polynap promoters because he's a great role model.

He's also a good person to kick off this investigation of famous polysleepers because he's recent and well documented. There's a good deal of literature about and by him, so it wasn't too difficult to find some reliable information.


So, did he polyphasically or Uberman sleep? Quite likely. "dfishel" from the Uberman Sleep Yahoo! Group sent me a reference to Bucky Works: Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today. The relevant passages are on pages 66 and 67. Just poking at it in Google Book Search makes me think it's worth throwing on my reading list.

Interestingly, Bucky Works also notes that the ideal diet (according to "Bucky") is not a vegan / vegetarian diet, as suggested by some, but instead a diet consisting entirely of "steak, prunes, Jell-o(R), and strong tea, taken three, and sometimes four times a day, synchronized with his naps." However, the book goes on to say that later, in the 1970s, he reniged on that diet to be an advocate of the winged bean in his autonomous housing ideas.


An apparently autobiographical account discussing his revelation and suicidal contemplation also mentions that he decided to sleep "that way that certain animals sleep: lying down as soon as I was tired, sleeping a half hour every six hours." Not quite the Stampi Uberman sleep, but polyphasic nonetheless.

So, it's likely that he did in fact sleep polyphasically (unless someone has information that discounts these sources...?).


One down, many to go. :)
-sean