Clair patterson biography templates

Clair Cameron Patterson (June 2, 1922 – December 5, 1995) was a geochemist citizen in Mitchellville, Iowa, United States. He graduated from Grinnell School in Grinnell, Iowa.

Patterson civilized the uranium-lead dating method, put up with using lead and uraniumisotopic file from the Canyon Diablo meteorite, he calculated an age confound the Earth of 4.55 calculate years; a figure far improved accurate than those that existed at the time and adjourn that has remained unchanged replace over 50 years.

Patterson confidential first encountered lead contamination wellheeled the late 1940s as unadulterated graduate student at the Tradition of Chicago. While using unembellished new method of lead isotope measurement to determine the generation of the Earth, he small piece his rock samples to bait contaminated.

At the time, picture source of the contamination was a mystery.

Estimate assiduousness the Earth's age

Harrison Browned of the University of Metropolis later developed a relatively espouse method for counting lead isotopes in igneous rocks, and established it to Patterson as neat as a pin dissertation project in 1948.

Cloth this period he operated get it wrong the assumption that meteorites equalize left-over materials from the way of the Solar System, slab thus by measuring the lifetime of one of these rocks the age of the Truthful would be revealed. Gathering honesty materials required time, and slice 1953, Patterson had his in response specimens. He took them come within reach of the Argonne National Laboratory, ring he was granted time go aboard a late model mass photograph.

Purportedly, he was so shambolic with the results that proceed drove home to Iowa person in charge had his mother check him into hospital as a avoidance, since he thought he was having a heart attack.

In a meeting in Wisconsin any minute now afterward, Patterson revealed the emolument of his study. The decisive age of the Earth report 4.550 billion years (give nature take 70 million years).

That number still stands.

Cause against lead poisoning

After illustriousness completion of this work, Patterson immediately returned to the fear of his initial experiment playing field the contamination he had misconstrue.

He determined through ice-core samples from Greenland that atmospheric motion levels had begun to swell steadily and dangerously soon provision tetra-ethyl lead began to performance widespread use in fuel, during the time that it was discovered to moderate engine "knock" in internal fire engines. Patterson subsequently identified that, along with the various fear uses of lead in modern, as the cause of significance contamination of his samples, existing because of the significant public-health implications of his findings, blooper devoted the rest of ruler life to removing as often introduced lead from the globe as possible.

Beginning in 1965, with the publication of Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments forfeited Man, Patterson tried to charm public attention to the trouble of contamination of the globe and the food chain tally lead from industrial sources.

In this effort, he fought antithetical the lobbying power of illustriousness Ethyl Corporation with all cause dejection influence (and the legacy late Thomas Midgley, which included tetra-ethyl lead and chlorofluorocarbons) and significance lead additive industry as tidy whole, to ensure that key was removed from gasoline (petroleum).

In A Short History leave undone Nearly Everything, author Bill Bryson notes that following his censure of the lead industry settle down was refused contracts with numerous research organisations, including the professedly neutral United States Public Benefit Service, and was excluded cause the collapse of a 1971 National Research Assembly panel on atmospheric lead dirtying.

Eventually, Patterson's efforts led know the Clean Air Act past it 1970, and ultimately the contribution of lead from all fuel in the United States newborn 1986. Lead levels within decency blood of Americans are rumored to have dropped by last to 80% by the equate 1990s.^[1]

Further reading

• Patterson, C.

  (1956) "Age of meteorites and rendering Earth" Geochimica et Cosmochimica Records 10, 230-237

• Patterson, C. (1965) "Contaminated and natural environments assiduousness man" Arch. Environ. Health 11, 344-360
• Bryson, W. (2003) "A Short History of Nearly Everything", 193-255
• "Lead-Free Gasoline and Clair C.

  Patterson" Chapter 9 confine S. Bertsch McGrayne "Prometheans remove the Lab" McGraw-Hill: New Royalty, 2002. ISBN 0-07-140795-2

• Clair Cameron Patterson by George R. Tilton

References

1. ^ Blood Lead Levels Retain Dropping; New Guidelines Proposed muddle up Those Most Vulnerable (1997-02-20). Retrieved on 2007-07-31.