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Figure 14.1 Clair Cameron Patterson (1922-1995). By kind permission
of Laurie Patterson.
geological materials from helium. In the Windy City he then pio-
neered the use of isotopes for the estimation of past temperatures:
this scheme is still of vital importance as scientists try to understand
the dynamics of global warming. Several others including Gerard
Wasserburg, now of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech),
worked on potassium/argon dating.
The beneficiary of Brown's visit was Clair Cameron Patterson
(1922-1995) (Figure
14.1
) who perhaps not surprisingly was known as
'Pat' to his friends. Born outside Des Moines, Iowa, a town that
spawned the travel writer Bill Bryson, Patterson was first introduced
to science when his mother gave him a rudimentary chemistry set.
Captivated, he had taken the first step on the path that led him to
membership of the National Academy of Sciences. He and his future
wife Laurie studied at the University of Iowa, after which they both
moved to Chicago and the Manhattan Project for which they were
dispatched off to work in Tennessee for a period. Following the cessa-
tion of global hostilities he began a doctoral study at Chicago under
the supervision of Brown. It was at about this time that Brown
