Clair Cameron Patterson

Clair Cameron Patterson ( born June 2, 1922 in Mitchellville, Iowa, † December 5, 1995 in The Sea Ranch, California ) was an American geochemist.

Among other important research for the geochemistry, such as the disintegration of the potassium isotope 40K to 40Ar and 40Ca, optimized Patterson, mass spectrometric techniques for the determination of lead isotope ratios that are important for the uranium - lead dating method. The physicist Georg Friedrich Houtermans used uranium-lead isotopic measurements, the C. Patterson, had conducted on Canyon Diablo meteorite to calculate an age of the Earth of 4.5 billion years, which he published in 1953. Patterson himself had already published a short time before age of the Earth of 4.55 billion years ago at a conference on Nuclear Processes in Geologic Settings, but not until 1955/1956 published in the scientific journal reviewten. This value from this is that to this day in science generally accepted age of the earth. Patterson established himself a sterile laboratory, so as not to contaminate the meteorite samples with the water contained in the Earth's atmosphere lead. He developed a method to gain from polar ice cores conclusions about the composition of the atmosphere in the past. This procedure is still of great importance.

Through various publications Patterson tried to make the public aware of the problem of contamination of the natural environment and the food chain with lead from industrial sources carefully. One of his main goals was to lead ( tetraethyl lead) to banish from gasoline, which he put himself in a strong U.S. business lobby.

In his honor, an asteroid ( 2511 ) and a peak in the Antarctic Queen Maud Mountains were named. In 1980 he received the V. M. Goldschmidt Award.