John C. Fisher

1919 – 2018

Biography on Find A Grave

Memorial article from Infinite Energy

Contents: Introduction · Start here · Guide to the collection · Published papers · Working papers · Presentations · Elsewhere

Introduction

John Fisher spent some thirty years as a research scientist at General Electric, where his work on dislocations, nucleation, and grain-boundary diffusion became standard material, and another forty as an independent scientist and consultant. His research interests ranged widely — solid-state physics, superconductivity, elementary particles, energy economics. This page covers only the work that dominated his final three decades: cold fusion.

When Fleischmann and Pons made their announcement in 1989, Fisher's first reaction was disbelief — he bet a friend a million dollars to one that the claim was wrong. Working through the accumulating experimental reports changed his mind, and he set out to find an explanation that required no new fundamental particles and no violation of established nuclear physics. His answer — polyneutron theory, renamed neutron isotope theory in later years (one theory throughout; only the vocabulary changed) — rests on a single unorthodox assumption: that sufficiently large clusters of neutrons are bound and stable. From that assumption the theory develops chain reactions of growing neutron clusters in condensed matter, and from them derives the excess heat, the charged-particle tracks, and the nuclear transmutations reported in LENR experiments. It makes definite, testable predictions, and for over a decade he tested them in collaboration with the experimentalist Richard Oriani, whose etched-track detectors produced this collection's central observation: a particle shower in the vapor above an operating electrolysis cell that left some 30,000 tracks in 2002.

Below are his cold fusion papers in their final forms — fifteen published papers, fourteen unpublished working papers, and his principal presentations — curated from his files. Whether the theory is right is for the reader to judge; the papers are unusually clear about what would confirm or refute them.

If you are new to this work, start here

  1. The MIT colloquium talk (video, 2014) — the whole program, theory and experiments, presented by Fisher at 94. The most accessible entry point.
  2. Outline of Polyneutron Theory (2011) — the fullest written statement of the theory.
  3. Energetic Particle Shower in the Vapor from Electrolysis (2006, with R. A. Oriani) — the central experimental claim.
  4. Matches Between Polyneutron Theory and Experiment (2007) — the scorecard: predictions against observations.
  5. Cold Fusion Experiments To Do (2013) — eleven proposed experiments, for anyone inclined to put the theory to the test.

A guide to the collection

The theory, start to finish. The first publication is Polyneutrons as Agents for Cold Nuclear Reactions (1992). The mature theory is best read in the dated Outline editions — 2006, the published 2008 version, and the fullest 2011 edition — with A Case for Neutron Isotopes (2015) as his last summary of the argument.

The experiments, with Richard Oriani. The first journal report is Generation of Nuclear Tracks during Electrolysis (2002), followed by the ICCF-10 pair on detection and gas-phase particles, the ICCF-11 pair on the particle shower and reactions outside the cell, and External Radiation Produced by Electrolysis (2008). His history and evidence of the sandwich experiment (2016) is a late retrospective on the whole experimental program, including a revised interpretation of the 2002 shower.

Predictions and proposed tests. Matches Between Polyneutron Theory and Experiment (2007); Neutron Cluster Detection (2008); a proposed cold-start experiment (2011); Cold Fusion Experiments To Do (2013); Lithium as a Fuel for LENR (2013).

Transmutation. Polyneutron Theory of Transmutation (2006) applies the theory to the Iwamura transmutation experiments; Neutron Isotope Reactions (2013, with M. Emery Fisher) carries that analysis through complete computed decay chains.

The wider reach. Polyneutron Theory and Cosmology (2008) extends the theory to nucleosynthesis. A parallel line argued the nuclear-physics case in mainstream venues: Liquid-Drop Model for Extremely Neutron Rich Nuclei (1998), On the Possibility of Nuclear Stability Beyond the Drip Line (2004), and the 2010 ACS presentation.

The last work. Crystal-Phase Model for Neutron-Rich Isotopes (2017), begun in his mid-nineties: a proposal that neutron-rich nuclear matter has a crystalline second phase, giving the neutron-cluster stability the theory requires.

A note on titles. Fisher reused titles as his papers evolved. "Neutron Isotope Reactions" names two different papers here (2004 and 2013); three documents are titled "Outline of Polyneutron Theory" (2006, 2008, 2011 — successive editions of one work); and "polyneutron" and "neutron isotope" name the same objects throughout.

Selected published papers

Selected working papers

Selected presentations

Elsewhere on the web