LENR Pioneer John Dash Dies

John Dash

Low-energy nuclear reactions pioneer John Dash died on April 13 at 82 from a variety of age-related causes, his son William Dash told New Energy Times.

Dash, who was born in 1933, earned his Ph.D. in metallurgy from Pennsylvania State University in 1966. He began teaching in the Physics Department at Portland State University, in Oregon.

In 1989, the head of the Physics Department asked him to look into the "cold fusion" claims of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, Dash told New Energy Times several years ago. Dash and his students performed their first experiment on April 24, 1989. The results were positive; Dash was hooked.

He told Eugene Mallove, the editor of Infinite Energy magazine, more about his first experiments.

"Before 1989," Dash said, "we had studied the electrolysis of water with an acidic electrolyte, so we used the same composition, except we substituted heavy water for light water in the electrolyte.

"Using a small (about 1 sq. cm), cold-rolled palladium foil cathode about 25μm thick, we observed macroscopic plastic deformation of the cathode soon after the start of electrolysis. I had never seen such behavior in my 30 years of research on electrolysis, so I was immediately intrigued."

From 1989 to 2014, Dash was a sort of Johnny Appleseed, spreading seeds of knowledge about LENRs to students around the world. From 1998 until 2015, he was professor emeritus and continued to mentor students. As of 2005, he had advised seven students who completed master’s theses and two who completed Ph.D. dissertations on the research. Some of them traveled internationally to study with him.