Martin Fleischmann

Martin Fleischmann (born March 29, 1927 in Karlsbad , Czechoslovakia ; † August 3, 2012 in Tisbury) was a German-British chemist and internationally recognized expert on electrochemistry , who became known through the report of promising results regarding cold fusion , but which could not be traced by third parties.

Life

Martin Fleischmann grew up in the 1930s in the Sudetenland , which he left with his family in 1939 at the age of twelve before being threatened by the German National Socialists because of his Jewish descent . Fleischmann studied at Imperial College London , where he at 1950 John Bockris with the work in Electro Diffusion Studies doctorate was. He then taught at Newcastle University (then King's College ) and in 1967 became Professor of Electrochemistry at the University of Southampton . In 1982 he retired.

Fleischmann played in 1974 a role in the discovery of surface enhanced Raman scattering ( English Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering , SERS) and developed around 1980 the Ultramicroelectrode (UME).

Fleischmann, who had Parkinson's disease , lived with his wife in Wiltshire , England .

1970 to 1972 he was President of the International Society of Electrochemists. In 1986 Fleischmann was admitted to the Royal Society as a fellow and in 1979 received its medal for electrochemistry and thermodynamics. In 1985 he received the Palladium Medal of the US Electrochemical Society.

Cold fusion

In 1989, Fleischmann conducted research at the University of Utah . On March 23, 1989, Fleischmann reported at a press conference, together with his colleague and student Stanley Pons , of experiments in which cold nuclear fusion had been observed, which attracted great attention worldwide because two chemists did something with a relatively simple electrolysis experiment It seemed to have succeeded what hundreds of physicists and engineers had been researching in vain for decades at a cost of billions. The announcement at a press conference before publication in a specialist journal came under pressure from the university, which wanted to secure the patents, and later brought Fleischmann and Pons a lot of criticism from specialist colleagues. But also the experiment by Fleischmann and Pons, which was immediately repeated hundreds of times all over the world, came under heavy criticism after the results, for example at Caltech , could not be reproduced with significantly higher interdisciplinary, experimental effort (a group of 22 scientists under Nathan Lewis ). When Lewis and colleagues presented their negative results at the meeting of the Electrochemical Society in Los Angeles in May 1989, the tide turned against the advocates of cold fusion in the United States. Fleischmann and Pons could not continue their work at the University of Utah and instead continued it for a few years from 1992 onwards, financed by Toyota , in a laboratory (IMRA laboratory) in France . Fleischmann withdrew to England in 1995, but later published on the cold fusion with scientists from Italy and the US Navy.

Web links

Wikiquote: Martin Fleischmann - Quotes

A conversation with Martin Fleischmann at Telepolis , January 23, 2005: "Why is everyone waiting for America in research?"
Royal Society of Chemistry, September 6, 2012: D. Williams: Martin Fleischmann (1927–2012)
Obituary by Brian Josephson in The Guardian August 31, 2012: Martin Fleischmann obituary. Distinguished electrochemist whose claims for cold fusion have yet to find widespread acceptance.
Obituary by Douglas Martin in the New York Times on August 11, 2012: Martin Fleischmann, Seeker of Cold Fusion, Dies at 85.

literature

Philip Ball: Martin Fleischmann (1927–2012). In: Nature . Volume 489, No. 7414, 2012, p. 34, doi: 10.1038 / 489034a

Individual evidence

^ Douglas Martin: Martin Fleischmann, Seeker of Cold Fusion, Dies at 85. In: The New York Times . August 11, 2012, accessed August 13, 2012 .
↑ Life data, publications and academic family tree of Martin Fleischmann at academictree.org, accessed on February 6, 2018.
↑ Fleischmann, PJ Hendra. AJ McQuillan Raman Spectra of Pyridine Adsorbed at a Silver Electrode , Chemical Physics Letters , Vol. 26, 1974, pp. 163-166.
^ Fleischmann, Pons Electrochemically Induced Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium . In: Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry , Volume 261, 1989, p. 309, Errata, Volume 263, 1989, p. 197.
↑ Malcolm Browne Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of Fusion , New York Times, May 3, 1989 , at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Baltimore. Mention is made there of the nuclear physicist at Caltech Steven Koonin , who described the Fleischmann and Pons report as being borne by incompetence and delusion .
↑ Spirit from the Bottle , Der Spiegel, May 22, 1989 .

personal data
SURNAME	Fleischmann, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German-British chemist and internationally recognized expert in electrochemistry
DATE OF BIRTH	March 29, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH	Carlsbad , Northern Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH	August 3, 2012
Place of death	Tisbury

[1] Douglas Martin: Martin Fleischmann, Seeker of Cold Fusion, Dies at 85. In: The New York Times . August 11, 2012, accessed August 13, 2012 .

[2] Life data, publications and academic family tree of Martin Fleischmann at academictree.org, accessed on February 6, 2018.

[3] Fleischmann, PJ Hendra. AJ McQuillan Raman Spectra of Pyridine Adsorbed at a Silver Electrode , Chemical Physics Letters , Vol. 26, 1974, pp. 163-166.

[4] Fleischmann, Pons Electrochemically Induced Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium . In: Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry , Volume 261, 1989, p. 309, Errata, Volume 263, 1989, p. 197.

[5] Malcolm Browne Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of Fusion , New York Times, May 3, 1989 , at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Baltimore. Mention is made there of the nuclear physicist at Caltech Steven Koonin , who described the Fleischmann and Pons report as being borne by incompetence and delusion .

[6] Spirit from the Bottle , Der Spiegel, May 22, 1989 .