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Electrochemist and Cold Fusion Pioneer Dr. Martin Martin Fleischmann’s Historic Impact Compiled by Christy L. Frazier, with assistance from Michael McKubre and Marianne Macy lectrochemist and cold fusion pioneer Dr. Martin Fleischmann passed away on August 3 in the comfort E of his home in Salisbury, England, with his family by his side. He was 85. Fleischmann was born March 29, 1927 in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia to a Jewish father and Catholic mother. In a 1996 interview with Chris Tinsley in IE #11 (http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue11/ fleishmann.html), Fleischmann related a harrowing story about his family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938: “I always tell people I had the unique and unpleasurable experience of being arrested by the Gestapo at the age of 11...[M]y father was very badly beaten up by the Nazis. However, we got out. We were driv- en across the border by a First World War comrade-in-arms of my father...At that time, my parents also got permission to come to England, and we all got on the train in Prague and came to the Dutch border and the Germans cleared the train of all refugees and we were in the last coach and my father said, ‘No, sit tight, don’t get off the train,’ and the train pulled out of the station. So that’s how we got away the second time, and arrived at Liverpool Street Station with 27 shillings and sixpence between the four of us.” Fleischmann’s father died soon after the family emigrated to England, as a result of his mistreatment at the hands of Nazis. His mother showed great ingenuity and fortitude by starting and successfully running Old Cottage Toys, a doll company. Martin’s sister Susi later joined her mother in the business. The dolls are now collector’s items (see A Collector’s Guide to Old Cottage Toys: The Dolls of Margaret & Susi Fleischmann, Terry and Christine Summers, 2003). Fleischmann was educated at Imperial College (London). Gene Mallove wrote in Fire from Ice: “In a curious foreshad- say that one of the features revealed in that early 1970s owing of his later thinking, Fleischmann’s doctoral thesis study prompted their later cold fusion work. Fleischmann focused on how hydrogen diffused through platinum. He may have begun to wonder whether some of the peculiar used platinum membranes only 0.1 to 0.2 mm thick to study behavior of the deuterium ions (D+) in palladium would the electrochemical transport of the hydrogen.” make the lattice suitable for near collisions and possible con- In 1950, Fleischmann married Sheila Flinn. He began his ventional fusion reactions.” teaching career at King’s College, Durham University (now In 1974, Fleischmann played an important role in the dis- the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne). covery of the surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy effect At the young age of 40 in 1967, Fleischmann was named [see colleague memorials below for more about this discov- the professorial Chair in Electrochemistry at the University ery]. He was awarded the Royal Society of London’s medal of Southampton (England). His charge was to build a world for Electrochemistry and Thermodynamics in 1979. class electrochemistry group, and two names well-known to Fleischmann retired from teaching in 1982, and was given the field would later study there as a result—Stanley Pons an honorary professorship at Southampton. Fittingly, he was and Michael McKubre. awarded the Palladium Medal by the U.S. Electrochemical Fleischmann was honored to serve as president of the Society in 1985—four years before he and Stanley Pons’ work International Society of Electrochemistry from 1970 to 1972. on cold fusion with palladium was announced at the Mallove wrote in Fire from Ice of a 1972 paper Fleischmann University of Utah. In 1986, Fleischmann was named a co-authored with his graduate student B. Dandapani Fellow of the Royal Society, an honor given to only the most (“Electrolytic Separation Factors of Palladium,” Journal of distinguished British scientists. He has also received the Electroanalytical Chemistry, 39, 323-332) that “lay the seeds Bruno Meyer Medal from the Royal Australian Chemical of future pondering of the mysteries that lurked within a pal- Institute (1988) and the Toyoda Medal from the International ladium lattice laced with deuterium.” Mallove wrote, “In the Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (2009). April 1989 Fleischmann-Pons-Hawkins paper, the authors In the early 1980s, Fleischmann began visiting and work- 1 INFINITE ENERGY • ISSUE 105 • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 ing as a part-time research professor with Dr. Stanley Pons, this field in 1991 and just waiting to see what other people then an associate professor at the University of Utah (later, would make of it in order to go back into it in 1993 myself, Chairman of the Chemistry Department). The two met in the but I was persuaded to go to France.” Fleischmann retired late 1970s, when Pons attended the University of from IMRA-Europe in 1995. Southampton to achieve a Ph.D. in chemistry. Fleischmann In his interview for “Cold Fusion: Fire from Water,” and Pons had similar interests, including hiking and cooking, Fleischmann reflected on his initial and continued interest and some of their first conversations about cold fusion-relat- in cold fusion research: “There’s obviously some very inter- ed effects took place during hikes in Millcreek Canyon and in esting science here; for me I was always interested in the the kitchen preparing dinner. Before 1989, the two chemists wider implications of looking at systems from the point of published numerous papers together on various topics. view of quantum field theory, but I think there is a techno- Fleischmann and Pons spent over five years and $100,000 logical angle to this whole project and that is that if it can be of their own money on cold fusion research prior to 1989. engineered then it can prove to be a very important energy They conducted experiments in Pons’ laboratory in the source.” Henry Eyring Chemistry Building at the University of Utah. Fleischmann published over 200 scientific papers and a It wasn’t until late 1988 that the University fully learned number of portions of textbooks. For our special issue #24 in about the groundbreaking work being done. Chase Peterson, 1999, celebrating ten years of cold fusion research, in his autobiography The Guardian Poplar, explained how he Fleischmann wrote “Nuclear Reactions in the Pd/D System: learned of the duo’s work through an outside review of the The Pre-History and History of Our Early Research” chemistry department by Dr. Richard Berstein (UCLA): (http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/fleischmannie24.pdf). Bernstein said to Peterson, “[T]here is one additional matter In the IE #11 interview, Fleischmann humbly projected you should know about that I am reluctant to put in the his hopes for the success of the cold fusion field: “Scientists written report. You have what could be an extremely impor- are really very conscious of the fact that they stand on the tant project under way in the shoulders of an enormous tree of department that will be hard to preceding workers and that their keep confidential.” And, just a own contribution is not so enor- few months later, on March 23, mous. What I’ve always said 1989, the entire world knew about cold fusion is that ‘every- about this “extremely important thing I can say about cold fusion project.” See Mallove’s Fire from can be condensed onto about Ice and Charles Beaudette’s half a page now and I will know Excess Heat for very in-depth the subject has arrived when it is coverage of the early years of the a footnote.’” While it did not Fleischmann-Pons collaboration happen in Fleischmann’s life- and the firestorm that began in time, the field will hopefully 1989. Both books provide criti- overcome its negative “foot- cal details about the ways in note” status and become a scien- which the furor that followed tific footnote in the sense that the March 23, 1989 press con- Fleischmann meant—that the ference served to taint the repu- research and its resultant tech- tation of a potentially world- Photo by Marianne Macy nologies will become common- changing science for many years Martin and Sheila Fleischmann at River Barn (Tisbury, England), place. to come. one of their favorite places, May 2010. Fleischmann is survived by his Fleischmann, in a 1998 inter- loving wife Sheila, two children, view for the New Energy Foundation’s documentary “Cold Nick and Vanessa, and numerous grandchildren. His daugh- Fusion: Fire from Water,” commented on the unfortunate ter Charlotte Fleischmann passed away earlier this year. behavior of journalists following the March 1989 announce- Dr. Martin Fleischmann’s impact on the new energy field, ment: “I think what I find distressing about the name-call- and science as a whole, is immeasurable. The Fleischmann- ing is not so much that as just that it is such sheer bad jour- Pons discovery and announcement interested so many sci- nalism. I think there has been a terrible decay in journalistic entists around the world; the majority of experimentalists standards. In the old days you had to present the facts and and theorists in the LENR field today began work in the field then you had to have an editorial comment. Facts and edi- in 1989, some within days of the press conference. A great torial comments are totally mixed now in such a way that in number of Fleischmann’s colleagues and friends have offered the end the reader finds it very difficult to establish what the remembrances of the great man, which we share below.
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