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SPECIAL SECTION: LOW ENERGY NUCLEAR REACTIONS
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 108, NO. 4, 25 FEBRUARY 2015 633
*e-mail: jpbiberian@yahoo.fr
Biological transmutations
Jean-Paul Biberian*
Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, 163 Avenue de Luminy, 13288, France
Over the past two centuries a large number of
experiments with animals, seeds and bacteria, have
demonstrated that biology is not only a chemical pro-
cess, but also a nuclear one. It has been demonstrated
that some minerals transmute into other minerals.
With the development of low energy nuclear reactions
(cold fusion), this topic, is back in the scie ntific
agenda. Very few scientists work in this field, but its
importance is such that its further development is
crucial.
Keywords: Biological transmutations, cold fusion, low
energy nuclear reactions.
Introduction
AT the end of th e 18th centur y Antoine Lavoisier demon-
strated that chemical elements cann ot be created nor de-
stroyed. He performed a number of chemical experiments
that showed that various elements can combine with each
other, but without any change in their elemental composi-
tions. This has been the credo of science until the d iscov-
ery of radioactivity at the end of the 19th century and later
artificial radioactivity. However, for everyone now, it is
out of the question that nuclear reactions can occur out-
side the nuclear world of radioactivity and high-energy
physics. Th e announcement by Stanley Pons and Martin
Fleischmann1 in 1989 that it was possible to produce
nuclear reactions at ambient temperature by electrochemis-
try r eopened the door of biological transmutations. The
work of several pioneers2–7 has been totally ignored by
the scientific community as their observations were
against the known laws of ph ysics. Fortunately, Vysotskii
and Kornilova8, have now shown with modern spectro-
scopic techniques transmutation with bacteria. I myself
have been convinced of the reality of the phenomenon
thanks to experiments showing that transmutations occur
in seeds and bacteria.
Research during the 19th century
In 1799, the French chemist Louis Vauquelin2 became
intrigued by the quantity of lime which hens excrete
every day. He isolated a hen fed it a pound of oats, and
analysed the eggs and faeces for lime (CaO). He found
that five times more calcium was excreted than was con-
sumed. He observed, not only an increase in calcium, but
also a subsequent decrease in silicon. He is certainly the
first scientist to have demonstrated the biological trans-
mutation of silicon into calcium. Vauquelin concluded
that a loss of only 1.274 g of silica cannot account for an
increase of 14.118 g of limestone. He reported that lime
had been formed, but could not figure out how it ha p-
pened. Furthermore, he encouraged other scientists to
replicate his experiment.
In 1876, Von Herzeele3, a German pharmacist
published the first of a series of books in which he
showed that plants continuously create material elements.
From 1875 to 1883, in Berlin, he conducted 500 analyses
with different types of seeds – clover, crimson, vetch,
rapeseed, barley, watercress, bean, white beans, kidney
beans, turnips, rye, peas lupine, coltsfoot and angelica. A
typical experiment was the determination of the variation
of calcium, potassium and phosphorus in Vicia sativa
during germination with or without the addition of min-
eral salts in distilled water. He even showed that the addi-
tion of various calcium salts to the medium in creased the
formation of potassium. The addition of K2CO3 increased
the formation of calcium. Von Herzeele concluded that
‘Plants are capable of effecting the transmutation of ele-
ments’. His publications outraged so much the scientific
community of the time that they were removed from
libraries. His writings were lost for more than 50 years
until about ca. 1930, when a collection was foun d by
accident in Berlin by Rudolf Hauschka, who subsequently
republished Von Herzeele’s books.
Research during the 20th century
Pierre Baranger4, a French scientist, was pr ofessor of
organic chemistry at the famous Ecole Polytechnique,
and head of the Laboratory of Chemical Biology. He
became intrigued by Herzeele’s experiments, but thought
that the number of trials had been too limited and the pre-
cautions against error were insufficient. Baranger decided
to repeat the experiments with all possible precautions
and a very large number of cases, which would allow a
statistical study. His research project from 1950 to 1970
involved thousands of analyses. Baranger verified the
content of phosphorus, potassium, calcium and iron of
vetch seeds befor e and after germination in twice-
distilled water to which pure calcium chloride was/was
not added. Hundreds of samples of 7–10 g each were
SPECIAL SECTION: LOW ENERGY NUCLEAR REACTIONS
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 108, NO. 4, 25 FEB RUAR Y 2015 634
selected, weighed to 1/100th mg, graded and then germi-
nated in a controlled environment4.
Baranger found an increase of 4.2% in calcium and
8.3% in iron, and subsequently a decrease in phosphorus
by 1.9%, and of potassium by 1.1%. Interestingly, the
addition of MnCl2 increased the amount of iron produced.
Louis Kervran is certainly the most well-known scien-
tist having worked in the field of biological transmuta-
tions. He had a broad knowledge of plants, geology and
also of nuclear science. His findings have been published
in French in ten books, some of which have been trans-
lated in English5. Kervran collected facts and performed
experiments which showed that transmutations of chemi-
cal elements do indeed occur in living organisms. He
pointed out that the ground in Brittany contained no cal-
cium; however, every day a hen would lay a perfectly
normal egg, with a perfectly normal shell containing cal-
cium. The hens eagerly pecked mica from the soil, and
mica contains potassium. It appears that the hens may
transmute some of the potassium to calcium.
From 1960 to 1980, Kervran reported the astounding
results of his research showing that living plants were
able to accomplish limited transmutation of elements. It
is clear that the calcium increased with germination,
whereas phosphorus decreased. There are certainly other
elements that played a role, but they were not analysed in
this experiment.
Zündel9 was a Swiss scientist, head of a paper company,
and a chemical engineer at the Polytechic School of
Zurich (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland. Following Kervran’s
observations, from 1970, he studied germinating seeds
and observed a 54–61% increase in calcium. In another
experiment, he grew 150 oats seeds (flämingkrone) in a
controlled environment for 6 weeks. Then 1243 sprouts
were analysed by atomic absorption spectroscopy for
magnesium and calcium. Potassium was found to decrease
by 0.033%, calcium increased by 0.032% and magnesium
decreased by 0.007%. The variation of magn esium was
not significant, but the decrease in potassium balanced
the increase in calcium. In 1972 with oat seeds, he ob-
served an increase of calcium by 118%, a decrease of
magnesium by 23% and potassium by 29%.
Studies at present
Vladimir Vysotskii8 is a scientist from Ukraine. He started
working on biological transmutations in the 1990s. He is
well known for using modern analytical techniques. In
particular, he used Mössbauer spectroscopy, very sensi-
tive to Fe-57 to measure its production. In natural iron,
Fe-57 represents only 2.2% of the total iron content. The
main isotope of iron is Fe-56, which represents 91.7%.
Measuring Fe-57 is also easy by mass spectroscopy, since
there is no possible interference with another element.
The experiments conducted by Vysotskii and his gr oup4
were performed with bacteria capable of developing in
heavy water. They chose Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia
coli, Deinococcus radiodurans, as well as a yeast culture
Saccharomyces cerevisiae. When manganese was intro-
duced with MnSO4, a clear spectrum was measur ed, indi-
cating that manganese had been transmuted into iron. The
authors analysed the material by time-of-flight mass
spectroscopy sh owing that the mass 57 peak was as large
as that of mass 56. This is another confirmation of the
production of Fe-57. Vysotskii and co-workers have also
looked at another reaction
Na-23 + P-31 → Fe-54.
In natural iron, Fe-54 represents only 5.8% of the total
iron content. The bacteria developed in a medium without
iron, and after development they measured Fe-54 as large
as Fe-56.
In similar experiments they observed the following
reaction
Cs-133 + H-1 → Ba-134.
To reduce r adioactivity, they conducted experiments with
synthetic microbiological cultures, which were up to 20
times more effective than standard microbiological cul-
tures. It was shown that Ba-140, which is radioactive
with a half-life of 12 days, transformed into Sm-152,
which is stable with the possible following reaction
Ba-140 + C-12 → Sm-152.
Interestingly, Cs-137, which is radioactive with a half-life
time of 30 years, transmutes within 310 days into stable
Ba-138
Cs-137 + H-1 → Ba-138.
This work is certainly the best proof of biological tran s-
mutations.
Conclusion
There is no theory capable of explaining biological tras-
mutations, but most likely low energy nuclear reactions
(LENR) will help better understand these new types of
nuclear reactions in solids, be it in a crystalline form like
in LENR or in living organisms like in biology. The con-
sequences of this body of research are of vital importance
to the fields of science, agriculture, health and medicine;
biological transutations must be studied in depth. A full
historical review is available in Biberian10.
1. Fleischmann, M., Pons, S. and Hawkins, M., Electrochemically
induced fusion of deu terium. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1989, 261,
301–309.
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CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 108, NO. 4, 25 FEBRUARY 2015 635
2. Vauquelin, L. N., Expériences sur les excré ments des poules,
compa rés à la nour ritu re qu’elles prennent, et Réflexions
sur la formation de la coqu ille d’œuf. Ann. Chim., 1799, 29,
3–26.
3. Von Herzeele, A., Uber die Entstehung der anorganischen Stoffe
(About T he Origin of I norga nic Substances) , 1873 ; Ents tehu ng der
unorganischen Stoffe (Berlin, 1876); Die vegetabilische Entste-
hung des Phosphors und des Schwefels (Berlin, 1880); Die vege-
tabilisch e En tstehung des Kalkes un d de r Magnesia (Berlin,
1881).
4. Baranger, P. and Gatheron, J. M., Les Plantes opér ent -elles des
transmutations? Les travaux de Pierre Baranger (ed. Baranger,
M.), 1980.
5. Kervran, C. L., Biological Transmutations (revised and edited
by Rosenauer, H. and Rosenauer, E., Crosby Lockwood,
London 1972, reprinted by Beekman, New York, 1980,
1998).
6. Goldfein, S., Re port 2247, Energy development from elementa l
transmutations in biological systems, U S Army Mobility Equip-
ment Re search and D evelopment Command, May 1978. D DC No.
AD AO5 6906 .
7. http://www.holleman.ch/holleman.html
8. Vysotskii, V. I. and Kornilova, A. A., Nuclear Transmutation of
Stab le and Radioactive Isotopes in Biolog ical Systems, Pentagon
Press, 2010.
9. Zündel, J. E., Transmuta tion of t he elements in oats. I n T he Plan e-
tary Association for Clean Energy Newsletter, 3 July/Au gust
1980, vol. 2.
10. Biberia n, J. P., Biologica l transmuta tions: historical perspective.
J. Co ndens. Matter Nucl. Sc i., 2012, 7, 11–25.
