Some notes on the work of Louis Kervran

By Adam McLean. First published in the Hermetic Journal 1981.

Some notes on the work of Louis Kervran

Adam McLean

In an article in La Revue Generale des Sciences Paris, of July 1960, Louis Kervran, then Director of Conferences at the University of Paris, described experiments proving the existence of the transmutation of some elements by biological means. Further details were given by him in a book Transmutation Biologiques (Maloine, Paris 1962). These experiments involved measuring the weight of Potassium and Calcium in dry seeds and in germinated seeds, these seeds during germination being isolated from contact with Potassium or Calcium in their environment, say through the water or air. Thus any measured increase in the weight of these elements could only be explained by some transmutation occuring in the living plant.

These publications were received with scepticism by some physicists because such transmutations were not explainable within the laws of physics then admitted. However, other scientists were to confirm Kervran's findings. Among these were Prof. Dr. Hisatoki Komaki, chief of the Laboratory of Applied Microbiology at a Japanese University, Prof. Baranger, Head of the Laboratory of Chemical Biology in the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. J.E. Zundel, at that time Director of a paper company having a chemical analysis laboratory, pointed out that in germinating oats, there was an increase of Calcium of sometimes more that 100% in a medium containing no calcium. Prom where was this Calcium derived ? Kervran suggested from Potassium, because of a decrease of Potassium (K) quantitatively equal to the increase in Calcium (Ca), and he gave the following formula in 1960

After many experiments, hundreds of analyses of tens of thousands of grains or plants J.E. Zundel (then Chemical Engineer of the Polytechnicum School of Zurich) confirmed these findings in a lecture in 1971 at the French Academy of Agriculture (Bull No. 4, 1972). He had then used chemical and physical methods of analysis. Later in 1979, Zundel, using the mass spectrometer at C.N.R.S (the Microanalysis Laboratory of the French National Scientific Research Centre), and neutron activation mass analysis at the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research in Villigen (Aargau), confirmed the increase for Calcium of 61% + or - 2% (average for both laboratories) that is absolutely beyond any statistical dispersion. (There was also an increase of 291% for Phosphorus and 36% for Sulphur). See the article - 'Transmutation of the Elements in Oats' in The Planetary Association for Clean Energy Newsletter, Volume 2, Number 3, July/August 1980. So it now seems that transmutations of a few elements arise as a property of the metabolism of living matter, transmutations obtained in great quantity at a low energy.

Recently a possible explanation for this phenomenon within the framework of modern physics has been evolved by French physicist Oliver Costa de Beauregard, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Institut de Physique Theorique Henri Poincare (Faculty of Sciences, Paris) who is also Director of the Centre National de la Reserche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.). Costa de Beauregard suggests that such transmutations neither takes place through strong interactions, nor through electromagnetic forces, but through the weak interaction. This takes place through the neutral current of the intermediate vector boson, the so called Z^o, particle recently discovered by particle physicists. Kervran's reaction for a biological transmutation from Potassium (K) to Calcium (Ca) in germinating oats is thus explained as being Initiated by neutrino capture (from cosmic rays) and the weak interaction follows mediated by the Z, neutral current (the Z^o probably existing as a virtual particle):-

It would seem that this formula has brought the reality of these transmutations into the theoretical framework of modern physics. We thus see that in living matter there not only occurs the chemical reactions (electromagnetic forces) of photosynthesis involving the absorption of photons of light from the sun, but also weak interactions that can effect the nuclear structure of matter, activated through the participation of cosmic energy in the form of neutrinos that stream down upon the earth from the depths of the universe. A full awareness of the consequences of these ideas should have a profound influence upon many domains of modern science, not least in agriculture, dietetics and healing.

In my article on 'The Ethers and the Fundamental Forces of Physics' in the Hermetic Journal Number 9, I pointed out that the weak interaction bore a relationship to the transforming ether known in esotericism. Indeed, I there related that this transforming ether "promotes the multiplicity of forms within the material realm through its transmutative quality of etheric force". Thus with Louis Kervran's profoundly important work we could stand upon the threshold of a turning point in the physical sciences, and we seem to have the meeting ground between contemporary Physics and an esoteric science of the ethers. One can only hope that such research is fully followed up and the profound implications for the present rigid view of the mechanism of living matter are not missed. Indeed can it be that the transmutations of the ancient alchemists may again gain scientific respectability?

In preparing this short article, I have drawn from published material from various sources, but for the basis of the article I am indebted to Louis Kervran's own translation of a recently published article on his work.