Egon Johannes Beer died March 25, peacefully and suddenly in his Guadalajara home. Although 90 years old, he remained active and alert, attending weekly luncheons at the American Society and entertaining friends in his home in Colonia Jardines de Guadalupe.
In an interview for this newspaper in 2013, Beer reported that he was of Austrian origin and was born July 11, 1924, in Yugoslavia, in an area now part of Serbia.
He left home at the age of 18 in 1942 during World War II, afterwards found himself in difficult circumstances in England and eventually migrated to Brazil, where he met and married Lise Lotte, a German born in Poland. The couple moved to the United States in 1979, where Beer was naturalized. He studied engineering, worked as an electrician in the Cleveland area and had a son there, before migrating to Guadalajara in 1986 at the age of 62.
After moving to Guadalajara, Beer maintained many scholarly interests, including astrophysics, geology, philosophy and medicine. For 42 years, after uncovering preliminary studies at the University of California, Riverside, in Japan and elsewhere, he carried on a campaign to research cancer treatment using induced hypothermia (lowering core body temperature) as a means to achieve metabolic restriction and starve tumors.
Beer enjoyed yearly visits from his son Rainard Beer, of Lakewood, Ohio, who survives him. His wife, who lives in the Cleveland area, also survives him. Beer arranged to donate his home upon his death to a Guadalajara children’s shelter, Albergue Infantil Los Pinos, A.C., who are reportedly utilizing it.
Visitation for Beer was held at Recinto de la Paz on Americas.