Patrick Mason Hurley
Patrick Mason Hurley (born 1912 in Hong Kong ; † October 21, 2000 in Mt. Dora , Florida ) was an American geochemist and geologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There he headed the geochronology laboratory.
Hurley grew up in Victoria, British Columbia , where the family moved in 1921. He studied mining engineering at Victoria College and the University of British Columbia with a bachelor's degree in 1934. He then studied at MIT with a Royal Society of Canada Fellowship and received his doctorate there in 1940. From 1946 he was a member of the faculty at MIT, where he was an associate professor in 1951 and a professor in 1953. In 1977 he retired.
Hurley investigated the isotope distribution after radioactive decay in minerals, sometimes with special mass spectrometers built in his laboratory (especially the geological clocks rubidium-strontium, uranium-lead, potassium-argon). For example, he investigated the early geochemical differentiation of the earth's crust with strontium 87 isotopes ( strontium isotope analysis ) and the development of crustal material in the formation of the continents and contributed to early studies on plate tectonics.
He received the Walter H. Bucher Medal .
He served on the editorial boards of Geochemica Acta, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, and Precambrian Research. He was chairman of the tectonophysics section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and president of the Geochemical Society as well as a fellow of the AGU, the Geological Society of America , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an honorary fellow of the Geological Society of London .
In 1941 he married Margaret Macurda, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.
Fonts
- Radioactivity and Time, San Francisoc: Freeman 1949
- How Old is the Earth?, Doubleday 1959 and more
- German translation: How old is the earth?, Desch 1960
- Living with Nuclear Radiation, University of Michigan Press 1982
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hurley, Patrick Mason |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American geologist and geochemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hong Kong |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 21, 2000 |
| Place of death | Mt. Dora |