Edward R. Dewey (1895–1978) is the founding figure of organized cycles research and the reason this whole tradition — and this forum's parent organization, the Foundation for the Study of Cycles (FSC, founded 1941) — exists at all. Trained as an economist, Dewey was asked by the U.S. government why the 1929 crash happened; after interviewing 100 economists and getting 100 different answers, he decided the better question wasn't why but what — what recurring patterns could actually be found and measured in economic and natural data. Over decades he and the FSC catalogued thousands of documented cycles across economics, biology, geology, astronomy, and more, publishing them in Cycles Magazine from 1950 and in his key work Cycles: The Science of Prediction (1947, with Edwin Dakin) and the later Cycles: The Mysterious Forces That Trigger Events (1971). Dewey's 1967 essay "The Case for Cycles" remains the clearest statement of the field's core argument: that a science built without accounting for cyclic forces is "manifestly incomplete, as medicine was before the discovery of germs." Dewey's own diagram of related cycle periods (built on ratios of 2 and 3 around a central 17.75-year period) was the direct starting point for Ray Tomes's own harmonics theory work. Discussion here should center on Dewey's specific findings and methodology.

Founder of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles and one of the pioneers of systematic cycles research in economics.

• Early role: In 1931, appointed Chief Economic Analyst for the U.S. Department of Commerce, tasked by President Hoover with identifying the cause of the 1929 crash and the Depression that followed.
• The pivot to cycles: Interviewed the era's leading economists on what caused the Depression and found no consensus — the most honest answer he got was "we don't know." Advised to study how business behavior occurred rather than why, he began looking for measurable, recurring cycles in economic data instead, and found them across many economic variables — with unusually large downturns coinciding with multiple cycles bottoming together.
• Founding the FSC: Learned of a 1931 Canadian conference on biological cycles convened by Copley Amory; joined forces with Amory in 1940–41 to reorganize the conference's permanent committee into the Foundation for the Study of Cycles (FSC), incorporated January 10, 1941, broadening its scope to cycles research across all disciplines (economics, biology, astronomy, geology, sociology, etc.).
• Publications: Served as FSC president and drove its output for decades — Cycles Magazine (published 1950–1997), the four-volume Cycles Classic Library Collection of his selected writings, and his best-known popular book, Cycles: The Mysterious Forces That Trigger Events (with Og Mandino).
• Key paper: "The Case for Cycles" (Cycles Magazine, July 1967) — Dewey's own summary statement of the field, arguing there are natural environmental forces that rhythmically affect human affairs, plant and animal life, weather, and even chemical reactions. (Ray is adding this paper directly.)
• His diagram/legacy: Dewey's ratio-of-2-and-3 diagram of cycle periods radiating out from a central 17.75-year period is the direct historical starting point for Ray's own harmonics-theory cycle-ratio work.