Geoscience Reference
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Chapter 14. The Universal problem and Duck Soup
A fascinating account of Clair Patterson's work on the question of the age of the
Earth, and his later environmental research, was recalled by him in interviews
conducted on 5, 6 and 9 March 1995 by Shirley K. Cohen for the Caltech Archives
Oral History Project. Parts of these were published in 1997 under the title 'Duck
soup and lead' in the Caltech journal Engineering &Science 60, part 1 (1997), 21-31.
It is a great shame that few similar oral histories exist for other scientists elsewhere -
they often provide insights infrequently touched on in obituaries. A comprehensive
account of Patterson's work is given by his colleague and contemporary George
Tilton in a memoir prepared for the National Academy of Sciences, Washington.
This includes a selected bibliography: Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of
Sciences, 74 (1998), 266-287. Appropriately, this follows the memoir for Al Nier.
The quotation of Patterson's thoughts on his predecessors was published in the
Clair C. Patterson Special Issue of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 58, part 15
(1994), 3141-3143.
The publications by Patterson and his colleagues on research that led to their
determination of the age of the Earth were: C. C. Patterson, 'The isotopic composi-
tion of meteoritic, basaltic and oceanic leads, and the age of the Earth', Proceedings
of the Conference on Nuclear Processes in Geologic Settings, Williams Bay,
Wisconsin, September 21-23 (1953), 36-40 (this was the first paper to suggest a
date of 4,500 million years); C. Patterson, G. Tilton and M. Inghram, 'Abundances of
uranium and the isotopes of lead in the Earth's crust and meteorites', Bulletin of the
Geological Society of America 64, number 12, part 2 (1953), 1461; C. Patterson,
H. Brown, G. Tilton and M. Inghram, 'Concentration of uranium and lead in the
isotopic composition of lead in meteoritic material', Physical Review 92 (1953),
1234-1235; C. Patterson, 'The Pb 207 /Pb 206 ages of some stone meteorites',
Geochima et Cosmochimica Acta 7 (1955), 151-153; C. Patterson, 'Age of meteor-
ites and the earth', Geochima et Cosmochimica Acta 10 (1956), 230-237 (which
many regard as the classic paper in this series).
Stephen G. Brush has written extensively about the dating of the Earth and
Universe, and his treatment of the last century is best found in three papers 'Finding
the age of the Earth by physics or by faith?', Journal of Geological Education 30
(1982), 34-58; 'The age of the Earth in the twentieth century', Earth Sciences History
8, number 2 (1989), 170-182; and 'Is the Earth too old? The impact of geochronology
on cosmology: 1929-1952', in Lewis and Knell, The Age of the Earth (2001),
pp. 157-175 London, 2001). Norriss S. Hetherington's paper 'Geological time versus
astronomical time: are scientific theories falsifiable', Earth Sciences History 8,num-
ber 2 (1989), 167-169, deals with the same problem but in less detail.
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