Samuel Epstein (geochemist)
Samuel Epstein (born December 9, 1919 in Kobryn , Belarus , then Poland , † September 17, 2001 in Pasadena , California ) was a Canadian - American geochemist .
Epstein came as a child with his family to Winnipeg and studied geology and chemistry at the University of Manitoba with a bachelor's degree in 1941 and a master's degree in chemistry in 1942. He was in 1944 with Carl A. Winkler at McGill University with a thesis on PhD in the chemistry of explosives in chemistry. He then worked for the Canadian Atomic Energy Project. In 1947 he went to the University of Chicago in the group of Harold C. Urey . There, together with Ralph Buchsbaum , Heinz A. Lowenstam and others, he developed a method to determine the temperature of oceans of the earth's past from the ratio of oxygen isotopes in carbonates (first applied to the Cretaceous period ). From 1952 he was at Caltech , where he became a professor and continued to deal with the geochemistry of stable isotopes. He applied this not only in paleoclimatology, but also, for example, in petrology, botany, the study of photosynthesis, animal and plant physiology, the study of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and of glaciers, in the study of lunar rocks and meteorites . In 1990 he retired, but continued to be scientifically active until his death.
In 1977 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1997 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada . In 1977 he received the VM Goldschmidt Award from the Geochemical Society , 1978 the Arthur L. Day Medal from the Geological Society of America , 1995 the Urey Award from the European Association of Geochemistry and 1993 the Wollaston Medal . In 1980 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Manitoba. 1978/79 he was President of the Geochemical Society.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Epstein, R. Buchsbaum, HA Lowenstam, HC Urey: "Carbonate-water isotopic temperature scale". Geological Society of America Bulletin, Vol. 62, 1951, pp. 417-426, HC Urey, HA Lowenstam, S. Epstein, CR McKinney Measurement of paleotemperatures and temperatures of the Upper Cretaceous of England, Denmark and the Southeastern United States , Geological Society of America Bulletin, Vol. 62, 1951, pp. 399-416
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Epstein, Samuel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian geochemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 9, 1919 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kobryn |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 17, 2001 |
| Place of death | Pasadena , California |