Arthur Butz

Arthur Butz studied at University of Minnesota and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is electrical engineering. Employment is recorded with Northwestern University. Works named in the authority record are The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.

• Name — Arthur Butz • Born — 1933 • Field — Electrical engineering • Workplaces — Northwestern University • Education — * Massachusetts Institute of Technology • University of Minnesota • Thesis Title — Perceptron type learning algorithms in nonseparable situations • Thesis Url — https: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022247X67901412 • Thesis Year — 1967 • Known for — * Holocaust denial

Born in 1933, Butz attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he received both his Bachelor of Science and, in 1956, his Master of Science degrees. In 1965, he received his PhD from the University of Minnesota. His 111-page doctoral dissertation, "Perceptron type learning algorithms in non-separable situations," considered a problem in control engineering - an abridged version was published as an article two years later in Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications.

In 1976, after he received tenure, Butz published The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry, an antisemitic, pseudohistorical book which argues that the Holocaust was a propaganda hoax. From 1980 to 2001, Butz was on the editorial board of the Journal of Historical Review, a publication of the Institute for Historical Review, a Holocaust-denying organization.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, "some Holocaust deniers argue that Butz's book has never been refuted by mainstream scholars, but in fact many of his arguments were thoroughly debunked" in books by Deborah Lipstadt (Denying the Holocaust, 1993) and John C. Zimmerman (Holocaust Denial: Demographics, Testimonies and Ideologies, 2000), and web sites such as Nizkor Project and www.anti-rev.org. Historian Jacques Kornberg, in a 1995 analysis, found that Butz had provided no evidence to support his claims that the Nuremberg trial defendants were tortured, and that his accusations were instead based on unproven allegations of torture associated with other trials unconnected to Nuremberg, such as the Dachau Military Tribunal.

In 2017, Amazon.com removed the book along with other Holocaust-denying books from its US and UK sites. The removal of the books from the platform was requested by the director of the Yad Vashem library, Robert Rozett, who sent an email directly to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Arthur Butz is recorded as engineer, university teacher and writer. Recorded at birth as Arthur Robert Butz.