Father Basile Luyet - Father of Cryobiology

Cryobiology Explained by Noted Priest-Scientist

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(EDITOR’S NOTE: Widely acclaimed scientist Father Basile J. Luyet was buried in Madison, Wisconsin. A short time before his death he visited Atlanta and spoke at length with GEORGIA BULLETIN writer Marie Mulvenna. This was the last interview of his life.)

By Marie Mulvenna

Father Basile J. Luyet was a slim, bent figure as he quietly walked the small parlor at St. Patrick’s rectory in Norcross. His heavy accent belied the 45 years he had spent in the United States, arriving here from his native Switzerland in 1929. His eyes sparkled with youthful enthusiasm as he spoke softly about his work, his hobbies and his priesthood.

Father Luyet has been hailed in the scientific world as the “Father of Cryobiology,” a title which drew a big smile and a lengthy explanation, both of which merely affirmed the title as one well-deserved. For the prominent priest has been fascinated for many years with the scientific wonder of freezing living cells and tissues, later returning them to life. “I specialize in freezing,” he says with a casualness that omits the extremely intricate and highly involved nature of his life’s work and devotion.

With current interest often expressed about the possibility of freezing and later returning to life, the topic of cryobiology rates high on the list of popular topics for discussion. But discussion is something Father Luyet leaves to the speculators and conversationalists.

He is instead in the lab, working long hours on the freezing of minute particles of living tissue which will later be restored to life. For many years, he has worked endlessly in the lab trying to see which living organ can survive freezing. “It’s not so simple,” he says by way of explanation.

Father Luyet has been frequently asked his views on the application of cryobiology to human beings. He is not helpful. “It would be easier to bring back a dead body than a frozen one,” he explains, adding that freezing destroys muscle tissue and causes marked disintegration. “We have been successful in restoring to life only minute pieces of tissue and even that is with some injury.”

For the past 17 years, Father Luyet has called Madison, Wisconsin, his home where he has worked endlessly in a research lab and with the assist of a grant to underwrite his studies. He built and fostered a productive non-profit group called The American Foundation for Biological Research, devoted to biophysical studies on freezing and freezing-related phenomena. To encourage more directly health-related applications, he developed a second laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, in 1966.

Born in Savièse (Valais), Switerzland, in 1897, Basile Luyet entered the congregation of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales. His interest in science dated back to his school days and his entrance into religious life was made only after he ascertained that he would be able to continue his study of science.

“I wouldn’t enter if they had said no,” he adds, explaining that St. Francis’ statement “science is the eighth sacrament of the priest” was his guiding force. He felt strongly that he must learn as much as he could for true knowledge was most desirable in the Church, “knowledge that’s established with a certainty.”

Ordained in 1921, Father Luyet continued his studies for eight years at the University of Geneva, receiving two doctorates, one in biology and one in physics. In 1929 he received a grant from Yale University for graduate studies and arrived in America which was later to become his home.

While a student at Yale, he became intensely interested in the question of “what is life?” Expanding on that topic, Father Luyet said he then wondered how does the living differ form the dead; what happens during death; what biological phenomenon takes place. “To study and to know life I started to study death since death is the destruction of life.” His queries formed the basis for his intense study in later years. “I found that death can be produced by various causes – by heat, by cold, by poison, by the absence of water, by mechanical means that destroy cells and tissues, by radiations. “There are so many ways to produce death.”

In 1931 he was “borrowed” by the Jesuits to teach at St. Louis University, a post he held for 25 years and during which time he continued to delve into research. He held professorships in biology and later, in biophysics.

Father Luyet then proceeded to postdoctoral research at the Rockefeller Institute in New York where he became acquainted with Dr. Alexis Carell, the first of the Nobel prize winners in the field of tissue study and culture.

His feelings on life, and particularly the presence of life in an organism that can truly live apart from the animal, brought him to the realization that there was a category of life termed “latent life” in which an organism can exist in suspended animation. Father Luyet explained this with the example of nemotoid worms which can be dried and brittle, all signs of life activity absent. “We could keep them for four years, add water and the worm would then begin moving again, having qualities of life.”

“My big question then became what is latent life?” Father adds that this was by no means a new question, relating that well-known scientists had discussed just such a topic in the 18th century. “In fact,” he adds, “the French Academy of Sciences found it so interesting that they named a committee to study the recovery from the inanimate state and reported on it with all details. There is no doubt at all that after they are dried, some organisms recover. It is a fact.”

“My program then was how to bring animation back to latent life.” His interest and research resulted in 1933 with the publication of his journal entitled “Biodynamica.” This was followed in 1940 by a book “Life and Death at Low Temperatures,” which he co-authored with a sister.

The process of freezing and later returning to life is highly scientific and for the average person, somewhat complicated. Basically, it involves freezing living matter in such a way that the molecules are not ordered but become solidified. This is very simply defined as molecules in an amorphous or uncrystalized state. This is not an easy process and has been studied in depth for years by Father Luyet.

He details the process involved in freezing whereby millions of molecules are built up in an ordered arrangement or crystalized state. Via rapid cooling, time is not given for molecules to take an ordered arrangement. Rapidity seemed to be one of the key answers to the mystery of freezing in an unordered state, thus making return to life possible. Father Luyet recalls early research on the subject, most of which merely fed his curiosity more intensely.

A surprising deduction of many years of study is that freezing is impossible when it is too cold; it is only possible when the matter is cold and is cooled rapidly. The rapidity of the freezing process makes it impossible for the molecules to move or become ordered. “If cooled rapidly, an 1000th of a second can make the difference, you should have no ice formed and the matter is solidified in disordered or uncrystalized form,” says Father. “Living matter can survive freezing, but only if the molecules are not ordered but solidified where they are.”

The countless tests conducted by Father Luyet have yet to succeed in restoring to life any organism of a large nature. “We have worked with tiny slices of tissue and blood, freezing them very rapidly, even 10,000 degrees per second.” Some tissues, Father said, have to receive a form of anti-freeze in order to freeze properly, i.e. to later be returned to live.

Motion pictures have been taken of various living tissues, frozen quickly and then later restored. “We’ve frozen at 3,000 degrees (centigrade) per second and still couldn’t obtain a complete cessation of the order of molecules. A higher velocity than that produces a crystalline state if you have a solution other than pure water.”

On the rare occasions that he is not in the lab, Father Luyet delights in his hobby of physiology. Specifically he has for many years studied the history of folklore in an Alpine area of his native Switzerland. “I became interested in it because my original dialect was learned from my parents, it was never written nor taught in school.”

He commented that in Europe it was quite accepted that a priest could do things quite different from the ministry as such. He began a journal entitled “Cahiers Valaisans de Folklore” (Booklets on Folklore) and spent several years collecting data on his native dialect, which he said is closer to Italian than French. Many of the childhood legends he had heard he later produced in written form, a first in this area. “I wanted to give a picture of how knowledge is transmitted to the uneducated via word of mouth.”

His scientific papers and publications run in the hundreds and his professional affiliations run the gamut, including every imaginable established scientific association, American and European. But his heart is in the lab, still searching, experimenting, studying. His pursuit of truth has been life-long, both as a priest and a scientist.