I froze the first man in liquid nitrogen 50 years ago - and he WILL be brought back to life.

Robert Nelson, 80, has revealed to DailyMail.com what it was like to preserve the first 'patient' of cryogenics in liquid nitrogen in 1967 , Nelson, the president of the Cryonics Society of California, he said he believes the man, James Bedford, will come back to life one day , Nelson said he also wants to be frozen when he dies

Cryogenics is the idea that death is a gradual process, and one that can be reversed if a dead body is frozen quickly enough , Nelson revealed that when Bedford died, he was stored in the garage of his 'pothead friends' for two weeks while the cryonic capsule was still being built , Bedford now lies suspended in liquid nitrogen in a vault in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Nelson's life story and connection to the unbelievable science is also turning into a film, starring Paul Rudd
it was late evening on January 12, 1967 and three men were laboring over the body of psychology professor James Bedford, who had just died from kidney cancer at the age of 72.

But while the manner of Bedford's death - in bed at a hospital in Glendale, California, was not unusual - what happened next certainly was. Bedford was about to become the world's first cryopreserved human being – and now lies suspended in liquid nitrogen in a vault in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Although the 72-year-old said before his death that he didn't expect ever to be revived, scientist Robert Nelson, one of the trio who carried out the preservation process, says he is confident that Bedford will one day live again.

'When we froze Bedford, man had never been on the moon, there had never been a heart transplant, there was no GPS, no cellphones,' said Nelson, now 80.



James Bedford (whose body is pictured on the white table) was the world's first cryopreserved human being. Robert Nelson, now 80 (pictured giving Bedford an injection) was one of a team of three that helped preserve his corpse

Cryogenics is the idea that death is a gradual process, and one that can be reversed if a dead body is frozen quickly enough. Bedford's body was wrapped in a Dacron polyester sleeping bag and affixed to a stainless steel stretcher before being prepared for placement and put in a new capsule

'Who knows what the next 50 years is going to bring? I think his hope is in nanotechnology but the means to bring him back will exist sooner or later.'

Now Nelson's extraordinary story is set to be turned into a film starring Paul Rudd - and will follow his life from his early years as the stepson of a Boston gangster to his role in Bedford's preservation.

But the movie, a comedy, will also have its darker moments – not least the 1979 court case that saw him sued for $400,000 by some of the families of those he treated after he ran out of money to service his California cryogenic vault and left their bodies to decompose.

Those who were lost included the first woman to be cryopreserved, Marie Phelps-Sweet, who was 74 when she died in a Santa Monica hotel, and Geneviève de la Poiterie, a Canadian girl who was eight when she lost her life to a childhood cancer.

In the aftermath, Nelson was pilloried by the scientific community and the media, an experience he says left him so scarred that he refused to have anything to do with cryonics for more than 25 years.

Now living in the Pacific town of Oceanside, California, with his second wife Mouerth, 57, Nelson has given DailyMail.com the full story of his extraordinary life and of Bedford's pioneering preservation.

Bedford's death was the first step towards modern cryonics - the science of preserving a dead body (or 'patient' as Nelson calls it) - until such time, it is claimed, that the technology exists to awaken them.

But unlike contemporary 'patients', who are slowly cooled over three days before being stored in a capsule filled with liquid nitrogen, Bedford's journey began with an ice bath – followed by being stuffed into a Styrofoam box and temporarily stored in an LA garage.

But unlike contemporary 'patients', who are slowly cooled over three days before being stored in a capsule filled with liquid nitrogen, Bedford's journey began with an ice bath – followed by being stuffed into a Styrofoam box and temporarily stored in an LA garage

Along with Nelson, a retired electrician who never finished high school, Italian biologist Dr Dante Brunol and chemist Robert Prehoda, of Santa Barbara, California, began work on the psychologist moments after he was pronounced dead.

Having cooled Bedford with ice, removed and replaced his blood with the 'biological antifreeze' dimethyl sulfoxide, and packed him into a box, the trio realized they had nowhere to put him because his cryonic capsule was still being built in Arizona.

As a result, Bedford spent his first two weeks in suspended animation stashed in a Topanga Canyon garage belonging to two 'pothead friends' of Nelson's – and arrived there by pick-up truck.

'I had friends who lived in Topanga Canyon which is the hippy capital [of Los Angeles],' Nelson recalled to DailyMail.com.

'At the time, everyone out there smoked pot and I had these two pothead friends of mine called Sandra Stanley and Shelby Dzilsky who I loved dearly.

'So I called up and said, I have a problem and I need your help. Sandra said 'What?' I said, I have this frozen guy and no place to put him and it's going to be two or three weeks.

'She talked to Shelby and called me back, and said, 'OK – what are friends for Bob? Bring him on up!'

'And so, we were going through Topanga Canyon, along these incredible roads, with a frozen doctor in the back of my truck. It was crazy. I look back at it now, and I think, oh my God.

"When we froze Bedford, man had never been on the moon, there had never been a heart transplant, there was no GPS, no cellphones. Who knows what the next 50 years is going to bring? "



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