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Tom Scott interviewed him last year in a really wonderful video about microwaves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y

> I found an article that said "The microwave was invented to heat hamsters humanely in 1950s experiments." And I thought, no it wasn't. ...was it?

At over 100 years old, the man was remarkably coherent and healthy. Quite sad to hear he's passed now.

⬐ zeristor

I posted that video to HackerNews, it was very good but had a very low key title.

I probably have to watch it again since I can’t remember what it was about.

⬐ melling

Born in 1919, he made it to 103. Lindbergh hadn’t yet flown across the Atlantic, people were watching silent movies, and only 35% of US homes had electricity.

https://gizmodo.com/how-the-1920s-thought-electricity-would-...

Many people born today (10%?) are going to make it to 2125. The world is going to change even more in the next 103 years than in the last 103.

⬐ lordnacho

No way it's 10%. Annual hurdle in the old age years is double digit percents.

⬐ melling

It’s at least 10%. We cure many cancer(s), heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc over the next 100 years.

There’s also likely a few discoveries on improving general health.

⬐ stonemetal12

All data I can find says expected lifespan is decreasing, not increasing.

⬐ iisan7

Some of the discrepancy is semantics. Global maximum lifespan is improving, but that's across societies taking the best survival rate at each age. Within many societies, net longevity gains have stalled.

⬐ lordnacho

It's also the case that we already know what kinds of things kill people, and people aren't really sticking to the lifestyles that correspond to longer life.

Someone the Queen's age was actually unlikely to make it to 100, so you'd have to improve survival quite a bit.

From looking at a UK table I found, there's ~2000 people left of 100K at 99 years, 1300 left the year after. Table doesn't go to 103.

Despite everything else he accomplished in his quite storied professional career as one of the last independent scientists... Including his work on the Viking mars landers! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

To me he will always be the man who invented his own microwave to thaw frozen hamsters. The whole story is worth a watch since Tom Scott does an admirable job of explaining how he went digging up a weird fact expecting to debunk it only to wind up recording an amazing interview with James Lovelock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y but if you’re impatient the interview with lovelock about cryopreserved hamsters and his "microwave" starts here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y#t=5m42s

⬐ tombh

That is such a genuinely wonderful video <3

⬐ gnatman

Charmed and amazed by how lucid and lively he is recounting this story at 101 years old!

This Tom Scott's video from last year about microwave ovens features a nice interview with Lovelock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y

⬐ robswc

I had just watched that one!

Literally yesterday... small world I guess. He seemed like such an amazing person.

That's purely a size thing iirc. Lot quicker to get enough heat into a mouse to thaw it, than a human.

Edit to add an interesting related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y

⬐ SemanticStrengh

Then can we freeze human hands/fingers and turn them back to function?

⬐ _Algernon_

No idea, but another comment claims it works for severed body parts. I'd assume that freezing an attached bodypart would have complications due to circulation being hindered in non frozen parts of the body, and it would be painful.

Don't think a 21st century ethics board is gonna be onboard for doing such an experiment either.

⬐ SemanticStrengh

people in siberia/artic regularly freeze their fingers, no need to have cobayes. Blocking the circulation in the hand does not make someone die, many people survived loosing an arm for a reason.

What must be said though is that while freezing allow for partial body rescuscitation, let's not be fooled. The mice or body part might behave normally, but the body has suffered from a lot of possibly permanent damage (conformational changes, oxidative stress). I expect rescuscitated humans to have a lower quality of life and reduced lifespan, although that's fucking worth it for being rescuscitated!! One reason is that ice has that annoying property of taking more volume than water. This has consequences. However modern cryogenics aims to vitrify water, which is a special kind of ice that does not take more space! What people don't know is that structurally preserving organs AKA cryogenics, is a solved problem. Researchers have done that sucessfully to a pig's brain, preserving 100% of its structure. The current issue is that while we can preserve the body without structural losses, we don't know how to reanimate it because the chemicals they uses become toxic upon reanimation and there is no known way to extract it fast enough. As a reminder, before rescuscitating humans, cryogenics will allow better preservation of blood and organ donations.

> "I kind of doubt an independent inventor could bring this to market with today's startup climate."

Especially the kind of inventor who created microwaves for experiments with reanimating frozen hamsters, cough James Lovelock.

(Tom Scott's video "I promise this story about microwaves is interesting" which includes a brief interview with James Lovelock last year at age 101 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y )

Oddly enough, microwaving frozen mice was one of the very first non-radar applications of the microwave magnetron.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y

⬐ m0zg

My father used to serve in the Russian strategic rocket forces in the 70s (the nukes basically, which, ironically, would then be pointed straight where I sit today in the US, since we have some decommissioned ICBM shafts straight in the middle of the neighborhood), and they did a much cruder version of these experiments for "fun". They'd kill rats by throwing them into the path of a particularly powerful and massive radar beam. I doubt rats felt comfortable or particularly non-anxious, however, seeing how they'd be dead before hitting the ground after that.

They already studied this. It sometimes worked with small animals like mice, but fails as organisms get larger. There was a really interesting video about how microwaves were first used to test this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y

⬐ King-Aaron

Came here to post this link - quite a fascinating interview with James Lovelock

⬐ gus_massa

HN ask to use the original title, but in some cases the mods tolerate an alternative. My proposal [without spoilers] is "Tom Scott: The story of the origin of the microwave oven"

⬐ ksec

This may be one of the best YouTube Video I have ever watched. It somehow put a smile on my face.

⬐ derefnull

Summary of video:

0:30 Newspaper article asserts "the microwave was invented to meet a need to heat hamsters humanely in 1950's laboratories"

0:45 Percy Spencer discovered standing nearby a radar station would heat a peanut bar in his pocket

1:50 Magnetron: what is it?

4:35 Using a magnetron for microwave diathermy

9:40 "Almost every rodent they froze was reanimated"

10:00 Medical applications

11:15 Size of animal constrains use of technique (humans too big)

from the youtube link, references:

PAPERS FROM NIMR: A Smith, J Lovelock, A Parkes, 1954: Resuscitation of Hamsters after Supercooling or Partial Crystallization at Body Temperatures Below 0° C.. Nature 173, 1136–1137. https://doi.org/10.1038/1731136a0

R K Andjus, J E Lovelock, 1955: Reanimation of rats from body temperatures between 0 and 1° C by microwave diathermy. The Journal of Physiology, 128.

Lovelock, J E, Smith A U, 1959, Heat transfer from and to animals in experimental hypothermia and freezing. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 80: 487-499. https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1...