Stanley Pons
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Bobby Stanley Pons (born August 23, 1943) is an American electrochemist known for his work with Martin Fleischmann on cold fusion in the 1980s and 1990s.<ref>"Nuclear fusion", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011, accessed May 6, 2011.</ref>
Early life
Pons was born in Valdese, North Carolina. He attended Valdese High School, then Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he studied chemistry. He began his PhD studies in chemistry at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, but left before completing his PhD. His thesis resulted in a paper, co-authored in 1967 with Harry B. Mark, his adviser. The New York Times wrote that it pioneered a way to measure the spectra of chemical reactions on the surface of an electrode.<ref name=broad />
He decided to finish his PhD in England at the University of Southampton, where in 1975 he met Martin Fleischmann. Pons was a student in Alan Bewick's group; he earned his PhD in 1978.<ref name=broad />
Career
On March 23, 1989, while Pons was the chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Utah,<ref name="broad">Template:Cite news</ref> he and Martin Fleischmann announced the experimental production of "N-Fusion", which was quickly labeled by the press cold fusion.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> After a short period of public acclaim, hundreds of scientists attempted to reproduce the effects but generally failed.<ref name="shamoo" /> After the claims were found to be unreproducible, the scientific community determined the claims were incomplete and inaccurate.<ref name = Bad>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="shamoo">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="simon">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Pons moved to France in 1992, along with Fleischmann, to work at a Toyota-sponsored laboratory. The laboratory closed in 1998 after a £12 million research investment without conclusive results.<ref name = PW>Template:Cite journal</ref> He gave up his US citizenship<ref name=wapo>Template:Cite news (page 2 of online version)</ref> and became a French citizen.<ref name=platt>Template:Cite news</ref>