Kurt Alfred Georg Mendelssohn FRS[1] (7 January 1906, Berlin-Schoeneberg – 18 September 1980) was a German-born British medical physicist, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1951.

[6] He received a doctorate in physics from the University of Berlin, having studied under Max Planck, Walther Nernst, Erwin Schrödinger, and Albert Einstein.

Whilst the rising tide of German antisemitism provided the context for his reasons for moving, he was to discover that Lindemann's rivalry with Lord Rutherford and the Cavendish Laboratory, based at the University of Cambridge was influential in England.

Though Mendelssohn himself was not an Egyptologist, the book builds on advice from experts like Sir Robert Mond and Walter Emery, as well as his own visits to Egypt and Mexico.

Working from that conclusion, he further elaborated a theory that pyramid construction in Egypt took on a life of its own during the Third and Fourth Dynasties, more or less independently of the reigns of pharaohs.