The DHARMA (Department of Heuristics And Research on Material Applications) Initiative is a scientific research project that has a large presence on the Island between the 1970s and early 1990s.
Founded in 1970 by Gerald and Karen DeGroot, two doctoral candidates at the University of Michigan and financially backed by Danish industrialist and munitions magnate Alvar Hanso and his Hanso Foundation. The purpose of the Initiative is to create a large-scale communal research compound where scientists and free-thinkers from around the globe could pursue research in meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, and electromagnetism.
