Sept. 6, 2012 — by Philip Ball —

The following obituary appeared in Nature on September 6, 2012. Click the link below to read the entire obituary on Nature’s website.

Although a final reckoning should not let genuine achievements be overshadowed by errors, the blot that cold fusion left on Martin Fleischmann’s reputation is hard to expunge.

Fleischmann, who died on 3 August at the age of 85 after illness related to Parkinson’s disease, heart disease and diabetes, was the first to observe enhanced Raman emission from molecules at surfaces, now the basis of a spectroscopy technique. And he developed ultramicroelectrodes, used as sensitive electrochemical probes.

Nonetheless, he is best known for his claim in 1989 to have initiated nuclear fusion in bench-top apparatus. The ‘cold fusion’ debacle provoked bitter disputes that reverberate today. Along with polywater and homeopathy, cold fusion is now regarded as one of the most notorious cases of what chemist Irving Langmuir called pathological science: “the science of things that aren’t so”.

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Aug. 28, 2012 – By Steven B. Krivit –

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Hal Fox died on Monday, Aug. 20, he was 88.

In July 1989, Fox became the first publisher to specialize in “cold fusion” reporting. During the next ten years, he published Fusion Facts, the Journal of New Energy and New Energy News. His archives provide a substantial historical record of this field and are publicly accessible on the New Energy Times Web site.

Aug. 13, 2012

Source: The New York Times

Martin Fleischmann made the greatest discovery since fire: replicating the furnace of the sun at room temperature in a jar of water, essentially solving the world’s energy needs forever.

That is how Dr. Fleischmann might have liked his obituary to read. On March 23, 1989, when he and a colleague announced that they had achieved nuclear fusion in their laboratory, it even seemed possible. News reports heralded the scientists’ “star in a jar.” Continue reading »