TABLE OF CONTENTS R.Bowen
Retired from the Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Westf lische Wilhelms-Universit t, M nster, Germany
Paleotemperature scales were calculated by H.C.Urey and others in the 1950 s to assess past temperatures and later work using the stable isotopes of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon employed standards PDB and SMOW. Subsequently, subjects as diverse as ice volume versus paleotemperatures, oceanic ice and sediment cores, Pleistocene/Holocene climatic changes and isotope chronostratgraphy extending back to the Precambrian were investigated.
Oxygen isotopes of masses 17 and 18 were discovered in atmospheric oxygen in 1929. Deuterium, the heavy stable isotope of hydrogen was detected in 1931 and, by 1938, the carbon dioxide-water exchange technique for the oxygen isotope analysis of water had been developed. By the end of the 1930 s, the existence of variations in the hydrologic cycle of both hydrogen and oxygen had been elaborated. Isotope paleoclimatology started with H.C. Urey s researches both on the empirical and theoretical aspects of isotope chemistry that followed his award of the Nobel Prize in 1934. In that year, he had already examined oxygen isotopes in stony meteorites and terrestrial rocks and claimed that they are constant to 2.5%. Later refinements produced permil (% 0) accuracies and, after his Second World War involvement in the separation of uranium isotopes, he treated the thermodynamics of isotope equilibria, also geochemical and cosmic problems. A seminal paper on the thermodynamic properties of isotopic substances appeared in 1947 (Urey 1947).
A mass spectrometer was described for measuring the...
