Charles F. Ehret

Charles Frederick Ehret (died February 24, 2007) was a World War II veteran (Battle of the Bulge/Ardennes along the Siegfried Line) as well as a world-renowned molecular biologist who worked at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in Lemont, Illinois, USA, for 40 years.

Dr. Ehret researched the effects of electromagnetic radiation on bacillus megaterium with Dr. Edward Lawrence (Larry) Powers, as well as the effects of time shifts on paramecia, rats and humans. A graduate of City College of CCNY (College of the City of New York) and the University of Notre Dame, Ehret formulated the term "circadian dyschronism", popularized the term zeitgeber ("time giver") in the 1980s while appearing on morning TV news shows, and helped millions of travellers overcome Jet Lag with the Jet Lag Diet, and the recently updated (2009) international best-seller The Cure for Jet Lag book by Lynne W. Scanlon and Charles F. Ehret, Ph.D, both available online. Ehret once created the world's largest spectrograph, a rainbow 100 feet (30 m) long, that was large enough to bathe many petri dishes of tetrahymena in each 100 pm of the color spectrum.

During World War II, Ehret served with the Army's 87th Infantry Division. He was decorated with the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

Ehret died at his home in Grayslake, Illinois on February 24, 2007.[1]