The Immortalists : Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever

His historic career as an aviator made Charles Lindbergh one of the most famous men of the twentieth century, the subject of best-selling biographies and a hit movie, as well as the inspiration for a dance step—the Lindy Hop—that he himself was too shy to try. But for all the attention lavished on Lindbergh, one story has remained untold until now: his macabre scientific collaboration with Dr. Alexis Carrel. This oddest of couples—one a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning surgeon turned social engineer, the other a failed dirt farmer turned hero of the skies—joined forces in 1930 driven by a shared and secret dream: to conquer death and attain immortality. Part __Frankenstein__, part __The Professor and the Madman__, and all true, __The Immortalists__ is the remarkable story of how two men of prodigious achievement and equally large character flaws challenged nature's oldest rule, with consequences—personal, professional, and political—that neither man anticipated. He was one of the most famous men of the twentieth century, the subject of best–selling biographies and a hit movie, as well as the inspiration for a dance step – the Lindy Hop – he himself was too shy to try. But for all the attention lavished on Charles Lindbergh, one story has remained untold until now: his macabre scientific collaboration with Dr. Alexis Carrel. Together this oddest of couples – one a brilliant surgeon turned social engineer, the other a failed dirt farmer turned hero of the skies – embarked on a secret quest to achieve immortality.Their endeavor began on November 28, 1930, in Carrel's laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, a haven created by the world's richest man, John D. Rockefeller, so that medical investigators could pursue their wildest dreams, freed from the demands of clinical practice. For Carrel, who won the Nobel Prize in 1912 for pioneering organ transplants, that dream was conquering death. But not for everyone – only a special few.In one of his more ghoulish experiments, Carrel removed the heart from a chick embryo and placed it in a glass jar, where, with special cleansing and feeding, he kept it alive, with no signs of aging, far beyond the species' natural life span. That result, Carrel believed, suggested that natural death wasn't inevitable.But to attempt such a test with humans, Carrel needed a mechanical genius to create a device in which severed human organs could live and function indefinitely. Might that genius be the handsome pilot who astonished the world in May 1927 by flying alone across the Atlantic – a feat even most pilots had thought impossible – in a single–engine airplane he designed himself?Part Frankenstein, part The Professor and the Madman, and all true, The Immortalists is the remarkable story of how two men of prodigious achievement, and equally large character flaws, challenged nature's oldest rule, with consequences – personal, professional, and political – neither man anticipated. He was one of the most famous men of the twentieth century, the subject of bestselling biographies and a hit movie, as well as the inspiration for a dance step the Lindy Hop he himself was too shy to try. But for all the attention lavished on Charles Lindbergh, one story has remained untold until his macabre scientific collaboration with Dr. Alexis Carrel. Together this oddest of couples one a brilliant surgeon turned social engineer, the other a failed dirt farmer turned hero of the skies embarked on a secret quest to achieve immortality. Their endeavor began on November 28, 1930, in Carrel's laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, a haven created by the world's richest man, John D. Rockefeller, so that medical investigators could pursue their wildest dreams, freed from the demands of clinical practice. For Carrel, who won the Nobel Prize in 1912 for pioneering organ transplants, that dream was conquering death. But not for everyone only a special few. In one of his more ghoulish experiments, Carrel removed the heart from a chick embryo and placed it in a glass jar, where, with special cleansing and feeding, he kept it alive, with no signs of aging, far beyond the species' natural life span. That result, Carrel believed, suggested that natural death wasn't inevitable. But to attempt such a test with humans, Carrel needed a mechanical genius to create a device in which severed human organs could live and function indefinitely. Might that genius be the handsome pilot who astonished the world in May 1927 by flying alone across the Atlantic a feat even most pilots had thought impossible in a singleengine airplane he designed himself? Part Frankenstein, part The Professor and the Madman, and all true, The Immortalists is the remarkable story of how two men of prodigious achievement, and equally large character flaws, challenged nature's oldest rule, with consequences personal, professional, and political neither man anticipated.

His historic career as an aviator made Charles Lindbergh one of the most famous men of the twentieth century, the subject of best-selling biographies and a hit movie, as well as the inspiration for a dance step—the Lindy Hop—that he himself was too shy to try. But for all the attention lavished on Lindbergh, one story has remained untold until now: his macabre scientific collaboration with Dr. Alexis Carrel. This oddest of couples—one a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning surgeon turned social engineer, the other a failed dirt farmer turned hero of the skies—joined forces in 1930 driven by a shared and secret dream: to conquer death and attain immortality.

Part Frankenstein, part The Professor and the Madman, and all true, The Immortalists is the remarkable story of how two men of prodigious achievement and equally large character flaws challenged nature's oldest rule, with consequences—personal, professional, and political—that neither man anticipated.

The true story of how, 75 years ago, two men--one the most famous man in the world, the other thought by many to be the world's smartest--searched for a scientific path to a life without death. In 1927 Lindbergh was the first person to fly non-stop from New York to Paris, a feat most people then thought impossible. In 1930, Lindbergh met Alexis Carrel, then regarded as the most brilliant doctor who ever lived. Lindbergh's sister-in-law suffered from a heart condition that her doctors deemed hopeless, and he didn't understand why they could not simply replace her heart with a mechanical pump. Carrel himself was pursuing similar ideas, and a friendship and scientific partnership began, attempting to build a machine that could keep whole organs alive. They thought that this process could potentially render certain chosen human beings immortal.--From publisher description.

The Immortalists is the fascinating story of the friendship and extraordinary scientific collaboration between Charles Lindbergh and Nobel Prize-winning surgeon Dr. Alexis Carrel, who shared the goal of finding a scientific path to life without death. Unabridged. 10 CDs.

The New York Times - Kyla Dunn

In The Immortalists, the journalist David M. Friedman rescues this remarkable tale from the footnotes of history, arguing that Carrel and Lindbergh were secretly chasing after eternal life—but only for the right sort of people.

Documents the collaborative pursuit of aviator Charles Lindbergh and surgeon Alexis Carrel to discover a scientific path to eternal life, describing their five-year effort at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research to build a secret organ-sustaining technology.