George Wetherill

George West Wetherill ( born August 12, 1925 in Philadelphia, † 19 July 2006 in Washington DC) was an American geophysicist and astronomer.

Life

Wetherill served in World War II in the U.S. Navy. During this time he taught radar at the Naval Research Laboratory. His academic degrees to Ph.D. in Physics ( 1953), he obtained at the University of Chicago. He then joined the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism ( Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, DTM) of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. In 1960 he became a professor of geophysics and geology at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1975 to 1991 he was director of the DTM at the Carnegie Institution. He died on 19 July 2006 of heart failure at his home in Washington.

Work

Wetherill developed methods to determine the age of rocks from the ratio of radioactive isotopes and their decay products. He studied the career development of asteroids and other small bodies in the solar system, and predicted first that can reach Earth by meteorite impacts on Mars slung stones. Such meteorites were actually later discovered in Antarctica. Later he examined the formation and evolution of planetary systems, the emergence of terrestrial planets and the Earth- Moon system.

Awards

Writings

• Formation of the terrestrial planets, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 18, 1980, pp. 77-113
• Planetesimals - primary matter of the earth?, Scientific American, August 1981