Perry Hoberman

Amazing story in today's LA Times.

Link

This guy - a broadcasting engineer with no degrees, no medical background whatsoever - is diagnosed with an incurable cancer. He has a brainstorm about using radio waves and bits of metal to kill cancer cells. He starts tinkering around the house with pie pans, antennas, hot dogs. And guess what? It actually works.

The story's got everything, including a Nobel-prize winning chemist who gets involved and endorses the project just before he dies of cancer.

Oh, and it turns out the process can also be used to extract hydrogen from salt water (a chemist at Penn State calls it "the most remarkable discovery in water science in the last century"), but that's just a little added bonus.