(1909-1993) Austrian Chemistry, Geochemistry
The truly profound research contributions that Hans Suess made to science spanned the range between chemistry and geochemistry. Although his research covered numerous topics, there are four true benchmark contributions. The first was made while Suess was still in Germany. In 1948 and 1949, Suess worked on the nuclear shell model for the architecture of atoms with Hans Jensen and coauthored a study which would later earn Jensen a Nobel Prize. While at the University of Chicago, Illinois, in 1950 and 1951, Suess collaborated with Nobel Prize laureate Harold Urey. Suess had proposed that the relative abundance of each chemical element in the solar system depends in a fairly regular way on the elemental mass. The pattern of abundance is caused by a combination of nuclear properties and the process by which the heavy elements are created in stars. Harold Urey was the founder of modern planetary science and an expert on meteorites. Together they produced a benchmark study on abundances of elements in the solar system based upon meteorite geochemi-cal data. The documentation of this theory was the basis for NASA’s Genesis mission.
These two breakthroughs, however, are not even related to the true reasons for which Suess is famous in the Earth sciences. The first of these reasons is Suess’s development and later refinement of the carbon-14 (radiocarbon) method of isotopic dating. He determined experimentally that the relative concentrations of carbon-14 and nitrogen-14 could determine the absolute age of organic matter within the past 5,000 years or so. This method is now used extensively in archaeology as well as recent geologic features and processes. Papers on this research include, “Radiocarbon in Tree Rings,” among others. Suess also collaborated with roger revelle to document the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect. The way that Suess determined the amount of added industrial carbon was by using isotopes. Because industry relies so heavily on fossil fuels, the carbon introduced into the atmosphere comes from old sources (oil, gas, and coal) rather than wood. Old carbon has no radioactive isotopes because it has all decayed away. Therefore the component of radioactive carbon in the atmosphere is continually diluted by the addition of nonradioactive carbon. Wood from 1890 is used as the standard against which the atmospheric carbon is compared. This dilution is referred to as the “industrial effect” or the “Suess effect.” This and other work on radioactive elements are included in the paper “Radioactivity of the Atmosphere and Hydrosphere.”
Hans Suess was born on December 16, 1909, in Vienna, Austria. He was the son of Franz Suess, a former professor of geology at the University of Vienna, Austria, and the grandson of Ed-uard Suess, who wrote the book, The Face of the Earth, an early work on geochemistry. Even though he had geology in his blood, Hans Suess studied chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna through graduate school. He graduated with a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1935. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Zurich and the First Chemical University Laboratory in Vienna. In 1938, Suess joined the faculty at the University of Hamburg, Germany, in physical chemistry. He married Ruth Viola Teutenberg in 1940; they would have two children. During World War II, Suess was enlisted into a group of German scientists who were charged with developing atomic weapons. He was also a scientific adviser to the heavy water plant in Vermok, Norway. In 1950, Suess was coaxed to immigrate to the United States where he spent time at the University of Chicago, Illinois, as a research associate working with Nobel laureate Harold Urey. He obtained a position as a physical chemist with the U.S. Geological Survey in 1951 but accepted an offer from Roger Revelle to join the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, in 1955. He became one of the first four professors appointed to the faculty at the University of California at San Diego when it was established in 1958 by Roger Revelle. He retired to professor emeritus in 1977, but remained active through the rest of his life including as a visiting scientist at the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C. Hans Suess died on September 20, 1993.
Hans Suess was very productive during his career, having been an author of more than 150 scientific articles. Until 1950, nearly all articles were in German and even after that some were. Several of these papers are benchmarks in science on radiocarbon dating, the greenhouse effect, the nuclear shell model, and the origin and synthesis of the elements. Suess was recognized for his contributions to science with several prestigious honors and awards. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the Heidelberg Academy of Science, and the Austrian Academy of Science. He was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Queens University in Belfast, Ireland, in 1980. He received the V.M. Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society, the Leonard Medal from the International Meteoritical Society, the Von Humboldt Prize from the Humboldt Society, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
