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Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Swedish scientist, philosopher, and theologian, founder of the Swedenborgian sect.

Swedenborg was born Emanuel Swedberg in Stockholm on January 29, 1688, and educated at the University of Uppsala. From 1716 until 1747 he served as assessor for the Swedish mining board. At the Swedish Siege of Fredrikshald (now Halden), Norway, in 1718, during the Great Northern War, he devised a method of transporting boats overland. He was ennobled for this in 1719 and given a seat in the Swedish house of peers.

A man of unusual intellectual powers, Swedenborg made important contributions to mathematics, chemistry, physics, and biology. His Philosophical and Mineral Works (3 volumes, 1734) contain his views on the derivation of matter. His studies in physiology led him to attempt, in Economy of the Animal Kingdom (2 volumes, 1741), an explanation of the relationship between matter and the soul.

In 1745, after claiming to have experienced supernatural visions, Swedenborg began to study theology. In Heavenly Arcana (8 volumes, 1749-1756), he propounded a religious system based on an allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures according to instructions professedly received from God. Swedenborg maintained that in 1757 the last judgment occurred in his presence, that the Christian church as a spiritual entity came to an end, and that a new church, foretold as the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation, was created by divine dispensation. According to Swedenborg, the natural world derives its reality from the existence of God, whose divinity became human in Jesus Christ. The highest purpose is to achieve conjunction with God through love and wisdom. Swedenborg died in London on March 29, 1772.

Swedenborg's followers, known as Swedenborgians, accept his theological writings as being divinely inspired. He never intended to found a new religious denomination, but in 1787 his disciples in England were organized as a separate sect by the British printer Robert Hindmarsh. According to the latest available statistics, Swedenborgians in the United Kingdom number about 5000, divided among 75 societies. In the U.S., Swedenborgians are divided into two general organizations, known as the General Convention of the New Jerusalem and the General Church of the New Jerusalem. The former organization has about 2800 members in 47 societies and the latter about 2100 members in 33 societies.