Brent Dalrymple

G. Brent Dalrymple ( born May 9, 1937 in Alhambra, California) is an American geophysicist and geologist who created the time scale of reversals of the geomagnetic field with Allan V. Cox and Richard Doell, what with early evidence of plate tectonics mid-1960 years was used by Frederick Vine and Drummond Hoyle Matthews.

Dalrymple received his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley and was then brought in as an expert on radioactive dating by the potassium - argon method of Richard Doell and Allan Cox to the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, where their collaboration began on paleomagnetism. In 1965 Dalrymple, the first full -time view of reversals of the geomagnetic field of the last 3.5 million years before the Geological Society of America. He studied at the USGS, among others, the Hawaiian chain of volcanoes, geysers in California and impact craters on the moon and spent three years as Assistant Chief Geologist for the region west of the USA. Dalrymple remained until 1994 at the USGS and was a professor at Oregon State University and Dean of Oceanic and Atmospheric Science.

He also wrote popular science books and has been involved since 1979 in the fight against the creationist movement in the United States when he was at the time mandated by the California judicial authority to testify in court cases as an expert witness for the theory of evolution. Dalrymple is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2003 he received the National Medal of Science.

Writings

• The Age of the Earth, Stanford University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8047-2331-1.
• Ancient Earth, ancient skies: the age of Earth and its cosmic surroundings, Stanford University Press 2004, ISBN 0-8047-4933-7.