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    Michel Siffre, 85, Dies; Descended Into Caves to Study the Human Mind

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    He was a pioneer in chronobiology, the study of how our bodies understand the passage of time.On the morning of Sept. 14, 1962, reporters and onlookers began to gather around a hole in the ground, far up in the Maritime Alps between France and Italy. A few hours later, workers rigged a rope down into the darkness; soon they pulled out a small, sturdily built man named Michel Siffre.He had been inside the cave, 375 feet down, for 63 days, with only a four-volt lamp for illumination. He wore dark goggles to limit the glare of the sun, and he had to be carried to a waiting helicopter.This was no rescue: Mr. Siffre, a geologist, was conducting an experiment on himself, to see what would happen to his sense of time if he cut himself off from the normal day-night flow of life on the surface.It turns out that a lot could happen: Time as he experienced had “telescoped,” he said. His circadian rhythm of wakefulness and sleep stretched from 24 to about 25 hours. And what felt to him like one month was in fact two on the surface.“After one or two days, you don’t remember what you have done a day or two before,” he told Cabinet, an art and culture magazine, in 2008. “The only things that change are when you wake up and when you go to bed. Besides that, it’s entirely black. It’s like one long day.”Mr. Siffre, who died on Aug. 25 in Nice, was a leading figure in the field of chronobiology, the study of how the human body understands time. Previous scientists had speculated that, contrary to the prevailing idea at the time, our internal clocks are independent of the solar cycle, even as we usually adjust to its influence. Through decades of experiments beginning with that 1962 descent, he proved it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Pinnacle Man’ Found Frozen Near Appalachian Trail Is Identified

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      The man, Nicholas Paul Grubb, was found frozen near the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania in 1977. His identity remained a mystery until a state trooper found his fingerprints.For 47 years, he’s been known as the Pinnacle Man.On a brutally cold winter’s day on Jan. 16, 1977, two hikers found a man’s frozen body in a cave below the Pinnacle, a scenic viewpoint off the Appalachian Trail in Albany Township in eastern Pennsylvania, about 75 miles northwest of Philadelphia.The authorities performed an autopsy, took the victim’s fingerprints and determined that he was a male between 25 and 35 years old, with blue eyes and reddish curly long hair.There were no signs of foul play, and the authorities determined the death was suicide from a drug overdose.When no one came forward to claim him, the Pinnacle Man was buried in a potter’s field.At some point, the original fingerprints taken during the autopsy went missing, and the copies of those prints were too poor in quality to use for identification, the authorities said.More than four decades later, the man now has a name: Nicholas Paul Grubb, who was 27 and from Fort Washington, Pa.At a news conference last week, officials with the Berks County Coroner’s Office explained that a Pennsylvania state trooper tracked down the missing fingerprints to help identify Mr. Grubb.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More