Dr. Peter Graneau
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Dr. Peter Graneau of Concord, MA, died Tuesday, February 25, 2014 at
Rivercrest Nursing Home in Concord. He was born on March 13th 1921 in
Silesia where his father was a landowner and business man. After the war,
that part of Germany was annexed by Poland and his parents were able to
move to a property they owned further west. Since his studies at the
University of Berlin had been interrupted by the war, he was able to move
to England, become a British subject and attend the University of
Nottingham, where he was awarded the B.Sc. (First Class Honours) and PhD.
Degrees. He was later appointed a Fellow of the British Institute of
Physics. After university, he joined a large industrial laboratory (British
Insulated Callender's Cables) as assistant research manager and his aim was
to bring about collaboration between industry and academia, at that time
not a common practice. He was very successful in initiating many joined
projects especially in the advancement of standard electrical cables,
developing novel forms of electrical energy transmission and even
contributing to the electrification of Britain's railway network. In the
early 1960's, he was asked to serve on a US committee under the auspices of
the "Highway Beautification Act", championed by Lady Bird Johnson. His part
in the grand scheme to improve the urban and rural US landscape was to
underground the unsightly electrical overhead power corridors that blight
the environment. He eventually forged a conglomerate of Simplex Wire &
Cable, Arthur D. Little and MIT and in 1967, together with his wife and
son, moved to Concord, Massachusetts to lead this project. As a consequence
of the Vietnam war, the funding for this enormous enterprise was withdrawn
and he formed a consulting company called Underground Power Corporation and
at the same time established an electrodynamics and power transmission
laboratory at MIT with funding from the US National Science Foundation and
Department of Energy. There he developed promising novel power transmission
prototypes such as cryogenically cooled and sodium power cables and high
voltage switchgear and filed many patents in the field. This work
culminated in his first book, Underground Power Transmission (Wiley, 1979).
In his MIT laboratory in the late 1970's, he was also able to follow up
lines of thought that had originally arisen in his PhD work. Research into
the history, derivation and his recent experimental confirmations of the
original law of electrodynamics proposed by Andre Marie Ampre, provided a
revolutionary insight into the inconsistencies within currently taught
physics. It also shone a beacon into how modern physics could be simplified
and rationalised by a return to the Newtonian concept of "Instantaneous
Action At A Distance". This work would remain the basis and motivation for
his research throughout the remainder of his career. He was able to take
advantage of the "in house" computer skills of his teen-age son to perform
all of the calculations required to model the early electrodynamics
experiments. This close scientific collaboration has continued until today
and was a great pleasure for both men. His first book on the subject was
entitled Ampere-Neumann Electrodynamics of Metals (Hadronic Press, 1984).
While his son, Dr. Neal Graneau, was at Oxford University, UK, they
co-authored two further books in this area, Newton vs. Einstein: How Matter
Interacts with Matter (Carlton Press, 1993) and Newtonian Electrodynamics
(World Scientific, 1996). During the 1980's - 90's, he was also a visiting
professor at Northeastern University, Boston MA. During this time, he
formed an international research team engaged in the high current pulsed
arc liberation of stored hydrogen bond energy from water. He published more
than a dozen papers in this area which has opened the door to a vast new
source of clean and renewable energy. It is still an active area of
research in the UK and The Netherlands. His last book, also co-authored
with his son, In the Grip of the Distant Universe: The Science of Inertia
(World Scientific, 2006), explored the philosophical ramifications of his
earlier electromagnetism work and applied it to understanding the
fundamental force of inertia. The primary implication is that the inertia
that we feel on earth and which makes all objects resist acceleration in
proportion to their mass, is due to instantaneous force interactions
between every atom and every other atom in the universe. This highly
thought provoking "pre-conventional" concept contradicts much of the
philosophy of modern physics, but agrees with all known experiments and
provides a vastly simpler framework with which to understand the laws of
nature. In 2006, he became an editor of the US journal "Infinite Energy"
and was able to contribute more broadly to unconventional energy research
as well as furthering his renewable energy interests by promoting the
science of liquid bond energy liberation for the benefit of mankind. In
2009, he received the Sagnac award from the Natural Philosophy Alliance "in
recognition of a lifetime commitment to excellence in scientific pursuit,
for experiments in water plasma explosions and railgun recoils, and for
theoretical presentations of Amperian longitudinal forces, instantaneous
Machian interactions, and the unique role of water in renewable energy."
His publication list of 5 books and around 150 refereed publications leaves
a lasting legacy in the fields of physics and engineering. He is survived
by his wife, Brigitte, an advisor in Fine Art. They were married in
Buckfast Abbey, England in 1955 and their son Neal was born in London in
1963. After their move to the US in 1967, they made their home in Concord,
where he loved to write, play tennis, sail and he thoroughly enjoyed life
in the woods. Throughout his career, he nevertheless performed experiments
in many laboratories throughout North America and Europe and especially
enjoyed his professional visits to his son's pulsed power laboratory at the
University of Oxford, UK. He was proud to have become one of Concord's
authors, and will be laid to rest there in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. A
Memorial service will be held on Tuesday, March 4th at 3:00 PM in the
Duvall Chapel, Deaconess Rd, Newbury Court, Concord MA. A private family
burial will be held in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Funeral arrangements are
under the care of Susan M. Dee and Charles W. Dee, Jr., Dee Funeral Home of
Concord. To Share an online remembrance in Dr. Peter Graneau's guest book
visitwww.deefuneralhome.com.
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