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Gilbert Ning Ling (December 26, 1919 – November 10, 2019) was a Chinese-born American cell physiologist, biochemist and scientific investigator.

In 1944, Ling won the biology slot of the sixth Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, a nationwide competitive examination that allowed Chinese science and engineering students full scholarship to study in a United States university. In 1947 he co-developed the Gerard-Graham-Ling microelectrode, a device that allows scientists to more accurately measure the electrical potentials of living cells. In 1962 he proposed the Association induction hypothesis, which claims to be unifying, general theory of the living cell, and is an alternative and controversial hypothesis to the membrane and steady-state membrane pump theories, and three years later added the Polarized-Oriented Multilayer (PM or POM) theory of cell water.

Ling carried out scientific experiments that attempted to disprove the accepted view of the cell as a membrane containing a number of pumps such as the sodium potassium pump and the calcium pump and channels that engage in active transport.

He died in November 2019, one month short of turning 100.

In 1944, Ling won the only Biology slot of the sixth nationwide Boxer Indemnity Fellowship, to study physiology in the United States, which he took up in January 1946.

From 1950 to 1953 Ling worked as an instructor at the medical school of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. His research and experiments led him to the conclusion that the mainstream membrane pump theory of the living cell was not correct. This early embryonic version of the Association induction hypothesis was called Ling's Fixed Charge Hypothesis (LFCH).

From 1953 to 1957 he continued full-time research at the Neuropsychiatric institute at the University of Illinois Medical School in Chicago. Beginning as an assistant professor, he was promoted two years later to (tenured) associate professorship.

In 1957, he accepted the position of senior research scientist at the basic research department of the newly founded Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute.

In 1962 his first book entitled "A Physical Theory of the Living State: the Association-Induction Hypothesis." was published. At this time Ling became director of a research laboratory at the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia.

In 1984, Ling published his second book "In Search of the Physical Basis of Life,".

In October 1988, Ling's laboratory shut down due to his inability to obtain research funds from National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies. Raymond Vahan Damadian offered to support him and two of his staff: Margaret Ochsenfeld and Dr. Zhen-dong Chen.

From 1982 to 1985 he was a co-Editor-in-chief of the Physiological Chemistry & Physics and Medical NMR journal and since 1986, has been its sole Editor-in-Chief. In 1992 Ling published his third book, "A Revolution in the Physiology of the Living Cell." In 2001 his fourth book "Life at the Cell and Below-Cell Level" was published and has been translated to Russian and Chinese.

In 2011 his wife of 60 years, Shirley Wang Ling, died from incurable pancreatic cancer. In 2014 at the age of 94 he published his fifth book, a reply to Erwin Schrödinger's 1944 book What is Life? called What is Life Answered. He has published over 200 scientific papers, although much of his later work has been largely ignored by the scientific community.

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