Fred and Linda Chamberlain

Frederick Rockwell Chamberlain III and his wife Linda were the founders of the cryonics organization Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Their long and continued history of activism in cryonics make them among the most well-known cryonics pioneers. David Pascal wrote in the November/December 2005 issue of the Mensa Bulletin that, second to the man credited with the original idea for cryonics, Robert Ettinger, the Chamberlains have contributed more than anyone to the field of cryonics.

Fred and Linda Chamberlain met in 1970 as a result of their mutual interest in cryonics. They were both on a committee to organize the Third National Conference On Cryonics sponsored by the Cryonics Society of California (CSC). Fred worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as one of its space program engineers and was married with two children. However, his and Linda's partners did not share their interest in cryonics.

Fred and Linda became a couple and devoted themselves to cryonics, formed a cryonics corporation (Manrise) and wrote the first detailed procedure manual for cryonics that had ever existed. By the spring of 1971, they were legally married and were preparing to give a presentation on their procedures manual, complete with a working prototype of a perfusion system, at the Fourth National Conference On Cryonics in San Francisco.

There was strong resistance to taking cryonics into high technology too quickly, within CSC, and there were other problems, including almost total secrecy as to how CSC's decisions were made and how it was organized and operated. By the summer of 1971, these stresses were beginning to weaken their confidence in CSC, and they felt that they were forced to withdraw from it and pursue some other route.

Fred's father was a very fragile stroke victim, so they formed a new cryonics organization they named Alcor early in 1972, and (through Manrise Corporation) assisted with the founding of Trans Time, Inc in the San Francisco Bay area (providing its first perfusion equipment by a contractual arrangement). Cryonics pioneer Mike Darwin moved to California and became the technological core of Alcor for over a year, during which he conducted the first organized research ever done in cryonics on a dedicated basis, supported by Manrise Corporation. Attempts to raise capital for continued research through a new corporation failed, and Mike Darwin returned to his home in Indianapolis, Indiana.

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