John Reynolds (physicist)
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| John Hamilton Reynolds | |
| Born | April 3, 1923 Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
|---|---|
| Died | November 4, 2000 (aged 77) Berkeley, California, United States |
| Fields | Geophysics |
| Institutions | University of Chicago, University of California, Berkeley |
| Alma mater | Harvard University, University of Chicago |
| Doctoral advisor | Mark Inghram |
| Known for | Discovery of excess meteoritic 129Xe |
John Hamilton Reynolds[1] (April 3, 1923–November 4, 2000) was an American physicist and a specialist in mass spectroscopy.[2]
[edit] Life
John H. Reynolds was born April 3, 1923 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He studied first at Harvard University and, after serving in the Navy during World War II, at the University of Chicago. There, he was influenced by his Ph.D. thesis advisor Mark Inghram and by two other famous physicists, Harold Urey and Enrico Fermi. He specialized in mass spectroscopy and utilized this method to determine isotope ratios needed for the radiometric dating of geologically and cosmologically relevant samples. In 1950 he was appointed as professor to the University of California, Berkeley where he continued his research on isotope ratios in meteorites, leading to the discovery in 1960 that certain meteorites had an excess of xenon-129,[3][4] thought to be a result of the beta decay of iodine-129 in the early solar system.[5] His improvement of potassium-argon dating was adopted by several institutions.[2][6]
Reynolds was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1968. He died of pneumonia on November 4, 2000 in Berkeley, California, USA.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ The Leonard Medal, Meteoritics 8 (1973), pp. 291–293.
- ^ a b c John H. Reynolds, Physics: Berkeley, Bruce A. Bolt, Richard E. Packard, and P. Buford Price, in University of California: In Memoriam, 2000, edited by Micki Conklin, University of California Academic Senate, 2000. Accessed on line October 24, 2007.
- ^ J. H. Reynolds (1960). "Isotopic Composition of Primordial Xenon". Physical Review Letters 4 (7): 351–354. doi:.
- ^ J. H. Reynolds (1960). "Determination of the Age of the Elements". Physical Review Letters 4 (1): 8–10. doi:.
- ^ pp. 400–403, Radiogenic Isotope Geology, Alan P. Dickin, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0521598915.
- ^ John H. Reynolds, P. Buford Price, Biographical Memoirs 85 (2004), pp. 248–267, Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, ISBN 0-309-10363-0. Accessed on line October 24, 2007.
