Quick Facts
Biography
Corentin Louis Kervran (3 March 1901 – 2 February 1983) was a French scientist. Kervran was born in Quimper, Finistère (Brittany), and received a degree as an engineer in 1925. In World War II he was part of the French Resistance.
Kervran proposed that nuclear transmutation occurs in living organisms, which he called "biological transmutation". Proponents of biological transmutations fall outside mainstream physics and are not part of the scientific discourse.
Biological transmutation
In the 1960s, Louis Kervran claimed to have conducted experiments and studies demonstrating violations of Lavoisier's law of conservation of mass by biological systems, according to which the amount of each chemical element is preserved in all chemical reactions and, presumably in biology. Specifically he claimed during organisms can transmute potassium into calcium by nuclear fusion in the course of making an egg shell:
39
19K
+ 1
1H
→ 40
20Ca
Since biological systems do not contain mechanisms to produce the speed, temperature and pressure necessary for such reactions, even for extremely short periods of time, this would require a form of quantum tunneling previously unknown to physics.
Kervran said that his work was supported by prior studies and by reports of industrial accidents involving carbon monoxide. Kervran said that enzymes can facilitate biological transmutations using the weak nuclear force, by what he called "neutral currents." His response to criticism was to claim that physical laws do not apply to biological reactions, which contradicts the mainstream view that physical laws apply for all scales and conditions. In 1978, George Ohsawa, the founder of the macrobiotic diet, said that he had himself managed to transmute carbon into iron.
The alleged transmutations resemble cold fusion, which has been reported by many labs worldwide. There is currently no accepted theoretical model which would predict cold fusion to occur in the liquid phase of matter.
In 1993, Kervran was awarded a parodic Ig Nobel prize due to his "improbable research" in biological transmutation. The award description called him an "ardent admirer of alchemy."
Books
In French:
- Transmutations Biologiques: Métabolismes Aberrants de l'Azote, le Potassium et le Magnésium (1962) Paris : Librairie Maloine S.A. (2nd ed. 1963, 3rd ed. 1965)
- Transmutations naturelles non radioactives ; une propriete nouvelle de la matiere Paris : Librairie Maloine, (1963) OCLC 21388057
- Transmutations à la faible énergie : synthèse et développements (1964) Paris : Maloine OCLC 35460556
- A la découverte des transmutations biologiques : une explication des phénomènes biologiques aberrants (1966) Paris : Le Courrier du livre OCLC 30562980
- Preuves Relatives à l'Existence des Transmutations Biologiques (1968) Paris : Librairie Maloine S.A.
- Transmutations biologiques en agronomie (1970) Paris : Librairie Maloine S.A.
- Preuves en géologie et physique de transmutations à faible énergie (1973) Paris : Maloine ISBN 2-224-00053-7 OCLC 914685
- Preuves en biologie de transmutations à faible énergie (1975) Paris, Maloine, S.A. ISBN 2-224-00178-9 OCLC 1603879, (2nd edition, 1995).
- Transmutations Biologique et Physique Moderne (1982) Paris : Librairie Maloine S.A.
English translations:
- Biological Transmutations C. Louis Kervran, translation and adaptation by Michel Abehsera, 1989, 1998 (first published in 1972) ISBN 0-916508-47-1 OCLC 301517796 (extract of three of Kervran's books)
- Biological transmutations, revised and edited by Herbert & Elizabeth Rosenauer, London, Crosby Lockwood 1972 (reprinted by Beekman, New York, in 1998 under ISBN 0-8464-0195-9)
- Biological Transmutation. Natural Alchemy. Louis Kervran and George Ohsawa, George Ohsawa Macrobiotic Foundation, Oroville, California, USA 1971 (reprinted 1975, 1976) 48 pages.