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Martin Fleischmann

 
Scientist: Martin Fleischmann
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British chemist (1927–)

Born in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia, Fleischmann and his family fled to Britain in 1939. He was educated at Imperial College, London where he gained his PhD in 1951. He taught chemistry at the University of Durham (1952–57) and at Newcastle University (1957–67). In 1967 he was appointed professor of electrochemistry at the University of Southampton.

By 1988 Fleischmann had an international reputation as a productive and innovative electrochemist. Between 1985 and 1988 he coauthored 29 papers with his former student, the American chemist Stanley Pons (1943––sp;–sp;). Quite unexpectedly, in March 1989, they announced that they had achieved nuclear fusion by an electrolytic method under laboratory conditions at room temperature.

Nuclear fusion, the fusion of two light atomic nuclei to produce a heavier nucleus, is a process accompanied by large amounts of released energy. For fusion to occur the nuclei have to be brought close together, and this involves overcoming a high energy barrier caused by the mutual repulsion of the nuclei.

In practical cases this is achieved by high temperatures, as in the Sun or in thermonuclear weapons. Experimental thermonuclear reactors such as the tokomak also use high temperatures (about 300 million degrees) to initiate fusion. There is, however, considerable interest in methods of initiating fusion at low temperatures – so-called ‘cold fusion’. One approach to this has been inertial confinement, in which a sample of material is compressed by intense laser beams or particle beams.

Fleischmann and Pons also thought that pressure might be a way of initiating cold fusion. Palladium metal has a high affinity for hydrogen and, under the right conditions, can absorb large quantities of it. They electrolyzed water containing the deuterium isotope using a palladium cathode and reasoned that the palladium might absorb so much deuterium that the effective deuterium pressure within the electrode would be high enough to cause nuclear fusion. If this occurred, there would be a large increase in temperature, over and above that produced by the heating effect of the current. Fleischmann and Pons reported just such an effect.

Fleischmann was reluctant to reveal too many details of their work lest it prejudice their patent application. He did, however, collaborate with Harwell, the British Atomic Energy Research Establishment, who were best suited to replicate cold fusion. They found no evidence of fusion, no excess heat. Whereas positive results had been obtained by several leading institutions, they were subsequently withdrawn when errors were detected. Despite such setbacks Fleischmann has remained convinced of the essential soundness of his work with Pons.

Since 1990 Fleischmann's work has been mainly supported by Minora Toyoda, a Japanese businessman; he is currently based in Sophia Antipolis, a research center established by Toyoda outside Nice, France, concerned with the development of future technology.

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Wikipedia: Martin Fleischmann
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Martin Fleischmann

Fleischmann showing off part of his cold fusion test apparatus.
Born 1927
Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia[1]
Residence near Salisbury, England
Citizenship British[2]
Nationality British
Fields Electrochemistry
Institutions University of Utah, IMRA
Alma mater Imperial College London
Notable students Stanley Pons
Known for Work on cold fusion

Martin Fleischmann, (born March 29, 1927 in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia) is a British chemist noted for his work in electrochemistry. He came to wider public prominence[3] following his controversial publication of work with colleague Stanley Pons on cold fusion using palladium in the 1980s and '90s.

Contents

Life and career

Born in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, Martin Fleischmann moved to England in 1938 with his family. He received a PhD from Imperial College London in 1950. Fleischmann went on to teach at King's College, Durham University, which in 1963 became the newly established University of Newcastle upon Tyne.[4][5] In 1967, aged 40, Fleischmann became Professor of Electrochemistry at the University of Southampton.[6] From 1970 to 1972, he was president of the International Society of Electrochemists.[7] In 1979, he was awarded the medal for electrochemistry and thermodynamics by the Royal Society of London, and in 1986 was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society.[8] He retired from teaching in 1983 and was given an honorary professorship at Southampton University.[7] In 1974, he and coworkers were the first to report what was later called Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy.[3] [9]

Around 1983, while they were researchers at the University of Utah, he and Stanley Pons found what they believed a way to create nuclear fusion at room temperatures. Fleischmann wanted to publish it first on an obscure journal, and had already spoken with a team that was doing similar work in a different university for a joint publication.[10][11] The details have not surfaced, but it would seem that the University of Utah wanted to establish priority over the discovery and its patents by making a public announcement before the publication.[10][11] In an interview with 60 Minutes on April 19, 2009, Fleishchmann said that the public announcement was the university's idea, and that he regretted doing it.[12] This decision would later cause heavy criticism against Fleischmann and Pons, being perceived as a breach of how science is usually communicated to other scientists.[11]

On March 23, 1989, it was finally announced at a press conference as "a sustained nuclear fusion reaction,"[13] which was quickly labeled by the press as cold fusion[14][15] -- a result previously thought to be unattainable. On March 26 Fleischmann warned on the Wall Street Journal Report not to try replications until a published paper was available two weeks later in Journal of electroanalytical chemistry, but that didn't stop hundreds of scientists who had already started work at their laboratories the moment they heard the news on March 23,[16] and more often than not they failed to reproduce the effects.[17] Those who failed to reproduce the claim attacked the pair for fraudulent,[17][18] sloppy[17][19][20] and unethical work,[17] incomplete[19] unreproducible[21] and inaccurate[21] results, and erroneous interpretations.[22] When the paper was finally published, both electrochemists and physicists called it "sloppy" and "uninformative", and it was said that, had Fleischmann and Pons waited for the publication of their paper, most of the trouble would have been avoided because scientists would not have gone so far in trying to test their work.[10][23] Fleischmann and Pons sued an Italian journalist who had published very harsh criticisms against them, but the judge rejected it saying that criticisms were appropriate given the scientists' behaviour, the lack of evidence since the first announcement, and the disinterest of the scientific community, and that they were an expression of the journalist's "right of reporting".[24][25] Fleischmann, Pons and the researchers who replicated the effect remain convinced the effect is real, but the general scientific community remains skeptical.

Retirement and recent work

In 1992, Fleischmann moved to France with Pons to continue their work at the IMRA laboratory (part of Technova Corporation, a subsidiary of Toyota), but in 1995 he retired and returned to England.[26]

Fleischmann has more recently co-authored papers with researchers from the U.S. Navy[27][28] and Italian national laboratories (INFN and ENEA),[29] still on the subject of cold fusion.

In March 2006, "Solar Energy Limited" division "D2Fusion Inc" announced in a press release that Fleischmann, then 79, would be acting as their senior scientific advisor.[1]

Fleischmann suffers from Parkinson's Disease, and lives near Salisbury, England.[30]

Peer-reviewed papers

Conference proceedings

  • Fleischmann, Martin (2002), "Searching for the consequences of many-body effects in condensed phase systems", Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Cold Fusion, Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, ISBN 7-302-06489-X 
  • Fleischmann, Martin (2003), "Background to cold fusion: the genesis of a concept", Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion, Cambridge, MA: World Scientific Publishing, ISBN 978-9812565648 

Notes

  1. ^ Taubes, Gary (1993). Bad science: the short life and weird times of cold fusion. New York: Random House. pp. 6. ISBN 0-394-58456-2. 
  2. ^ Voss, D (1999-03-01). "What Ever Happened to Cold Fusion". Physics World. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/1258. Retrieved 2008-05-01. 
  3. ^ a b Shelley, Tom (October 2006). "Tiny reflectors boost sensing a billion". Eureka. http://www.shelleys.demon.co.uk/foct06ra.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-27. 
  4. ^ Covington, A. K. (1995), "Obituary : Harold Reginald Thirsk (1915–1995)", Electrochimica Acta 40: xii, doi:10.1016/0013-4686(95)90227-9 
  5. ^ King's College, Official Records of Durham University.
  6. ^ Charles Platt (November 1998). "What If Cold Fusion Is Real?". Wired: p. 2. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html?pg=2&topic=&topic_set=. 
  7. ^ a b William J. Broad (1989-05-09). "Brilliance and Recklessness Seen in Fusion Collaboration". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE4DA163CF93AA35756C0A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. 
  8. ^ "Fellows of the Royal Society" (pdf). The Royal Society. August 2008. http://royalsociety.org/downloaddoc.asp?id=5150. Retrieved 2009-02-17. 
  9. ^ Fleischmann, M.; PJ Hendra and AJ McQuillan (15 May 1974). "Raman Spectra of Pyridine Adsorbed at a Silver Electrode". Chemical Physics Letters 26 (2): 163–166. doi:10.1016/0009-2614(74)85388-1. 
  10. ^ a b c Shamoo, 2003, 86
  11. ^ a b c Simon, 2002, 28-36
  12. ^ Cold Fusion is Hot Again, CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/17/60minutes/main4952167_page4.shtml
  13. ^ Press release, published in Huizenga, Cold fusion, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 289
  14. ^ Bart Simon, Undead science: Science studies and the afterlife of cold fusion, Rutgers University Press, 2002, p. 39, citing Jerry Bishop, Wall Street Journal, Research in Utah to announce a development in fusion energy, March 23, 1989, or Scientist sticks to claimed test-tube fusion advance, March 27.
  15. ^ Fleischmann, Martin; Pons, Stanley; Hawkins, M. (1989), "Electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium", Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry 261 (2A): 301–308, doi:10.1016/0022-0728(89)80006-3 , and errata in Vol. 263.
  16. ^ Simon, 2002, page 35
  17. ^ a b c d Shamoo, 2003, pages 76, 97
  18. ^ Henry Krips, J. E. McGuire, Trevor Melia (1995). University of Pittsburgh Press. ed. Science, Reason, and Rhetoric (illustrated ed.). Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. xvi. ISBN 0822939126. 
  19. ^ a b Simon, 2002, p. 119
  20. ^ Michael B. Schiffer, Kacy L. Hollenback, Carrie L. Bell (2003). University of California Press. ed. Draw the Lightning Down: Benjamin Franklin and Electrical Technology in the Age of Enlightenment (illustrated ed.). Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press. pp. 207. ISBN 0520238028. 
  21. ^ a b Taubes, Gary (1993). Bad science: the short life and weird times of cold fusion. New York: Random House. pp. 6. ISBN 0-394-58456-2. 
  22. ^ Thomas F. Gieryn (1999). University of Chicago Press. ed. Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line (illustrated ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 204. ISBN 0226292622. http://books.google.com/books?id=GljD3CHbDx0C&pg=PA204. 
  23. ^ Simon, 2002
  24. ^ Simon, 2002, pags. 110-112
  25. ^ Robert L. Park (2002). Oxford University Press. ed. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (reprint ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 123–124. ISBN 0198604432. http://books.google.com/books?id=xzCK6-Kqs6QC&pg=PA123&dq=Giuliano+preparata+Repubblica&lr=&as_brr=3&client=opera&hl=es. 
  26. ^ Simon, 2002, p. 137
  27. ^ Szpak, S., et al., Thermal behavior of polarized Pd/D electrodes prepared by co-deposition. Thermochim. Acta, 2004. 410: p. 101.
  28. ^ Mosier-Boss, P.A. and M. Fleischmann, Thermal and Nuclear Aspects of the Pd/D2O System, ed. S. Szpak and P.A. Mosier-Boss. Vol. 2. Simulation of the Electrochemical Cell (ICARUS) Calorimetry. 2002: SPAWAR Systems Center, San Diego, U.S. Navy.
  29. ^ Del Giudice, E., et al. Loading of H(D) in a Pd lattice. in The 9th International Conference on Cold Fusion, Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. 2002. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing, China: Tsinghua University Press
  30. ^ Cartwright, J. (2009) "Fusion in a cold climate", New Scientist, 18 Jul: 28-29

References

External links


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