British chemist Martin Fleischmann, 85, who stunned the world by announcing that he had achieved nuclear fusion in a glass bottle, has died after a long illness.
His son Nicholas said he died Friday at his home in Tisbury, England. He suffered from Parkinson's disease.
Mr. Fleischmann was one of the world's leading electrochemists when he and partner Stanley Pons proclaimed in 1989 that they had sparked fusion, the nuclear process that heats the sun, in an experiment at the University of Utah.
The reaction they reported occurred at room temperature and appeared to give off little radiation, an enormous contrast to the still-ongoing quest to harness fusion by conventional means, in billion-dollar reactors at temperatures of millions of degrees.
The announcement in Salt Lake City raised the hope of a shortcut to fusion as a clean, renewable, and cheap energy source. But when other scientists rushed to replicate the achievement, most failed, and "cold fusion" was quickly labeled junk science. Physicists accused Mr. Fleischmann of incompetence and fraud.
- AP
