Royal Rife, American microbiologist and instrument maker (d. 1971)
Royal Raymond Rife (May 16, 1888 – August 5, 1971) was an American inventor and early exponent of high-magnification time-lapse cine-micrography.He is known for his microscopes, which he claimed could observe live microorganisms with a magnification considered impossible for his time, and for an "oscillating beam ray" invention, which he thought could treat various ailments by "devitalizing disease organisms" through vibration. Although he came to collaborate with scientists, doctors and inventors of the epoch, and his findings were published in newspapers and scientific journals like the Smithsonian Institution annual report of 1944, they were later rejected by the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Cancer Society (ACS) and mainstream science.

Rife's supporters continue to claim that impulses of electromagnetic frequencies can disable cancerous cells and other microorganisms responsible for diseases. Most of these claims have no scientific research to back them up and Rife machines are not approved for treatment by health authorities in the world. Multiple promoters have been convicted of health fraud and sent to prison.