[citation needed] Darwin contacted the Cryonics Society of New York (CSNY) and got from them a considerable amount of literature by Saul Kent, who became his patron.
Darwin had built his own cryonics equipment, which he found on his New York visit to be more sophisticated than that CSNY had actually used for cryopreservation.
Darwin and Stephen Bridge co-founded the Institute for Advanced Biological Studies (IABS) in Indianapolis in 1977, which merged with the then-California-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation in 1982.
[2] About 50 former Alcor members joined in the founding of the CryoCare Foundation, an organization dedicated to cryonics which later went defunct.
[2] Darwin worked alongside UCLA cardiothoracic researcher Jerry Leaf during the 1980s, and physician Dr. Steven B. Harris in the 1990s to create many of the key technologies and practices of modern cryonics.