Robert Ettinger | Cryonics pioneer, 92

Robert Ettinger, 92, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again someday, died Saturday at home in the Detroit suburb of Clinton Township. His body became the 106th to be stored in at the Cryonics Institute, which he founded in 1976.

Mr. Ettinger, who taught physics at Wayne State University, was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and spent years in hospitals. The bone-graft surgery that spared his legs inspired his optimism about the future prospects of preserving life through technology, a Cryonics Institute statement said.

Mr. Ettinger promoted his theory in other writings and appearances on television talk shows. Mr. Ettinger also established the Immortalist Society, a research and education group devoted to cryonics and extending the human life span.

The Cryonics Institute charges $28,000 to prepare a body and store it long term in a tank of liquid nitrogen at minus-321 degrees F. The first person frozen there was Mr. Ettinger's mother, Rhea, who died in 1977. - AP