Jerry Leaf

President, Cryovita, Inc.

Jerry D. Leaf served as Vice President of Alcor and President of the cryonics service firm Cryovita, Inc. He also worked as a cardiothoracic surgery researcher at the UCLA School of Medicine, co-authoring more than 20 papers from the laboratory of Dr. Gerald Buckberg. During the late 1970s and 1980s, he contributed to the field of cryonics by introducing technologies and procedures of thoracic surgery, especially heart-lung bypass, for improved blood vessel access and life support of cryonics patients. Together with Mike Darwin he developed a blood substitute shown capable of sustaining life in dogs for 4 hours at near-freezing temperatures. He was cryopreserved by Alcor in 1991.