Background
Kervran was born in Quimper, Finistère (Brittany), and received a degree as an engineer in 1925.
Kervran was born in Quimper, Finistère (Brittany), and received a degree as an engineer in 1925.
In World World War II he was part of the French Resistance. Kervran proposed that nuclear transmutation occurs in living organisms, which he called "biological transmutation". Such transmutations are not possible according to the known laws of physics, chemistry and biology.
Proponents of biological transmutations fall outside the mainstream and are not part of the scientific discourse.
In the 1960s, Louis Kervran claimed to have conducted experiments and studies demonstrating violations of the law of conservation of mass by biological systems, specifically during the precipitation of egg shells. As a result, he claimed that organisms can transmute potassium into calcium by nuclear fusion:
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 contradicts basic physical laws.
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.
Kervran"s theories seem to be based on the philosophy of yin and yang.
The alleged transmutations resemble cold fusion. There is currently no accepted theoretical model which would predict cold fusion to occur in the liquid phase of matter.