The Association of Lead with Uranium in Rock-Minerals

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https://exhibits.library.illinois.edu/s/rbml/item/4009
Title
The Association of Lead with Uranium in Rock-Minerals
Description
After Rutherford first demonstrated the incredible promise of radiometric dating in 1905, the geochronologist Arthur Holmes applied the technique widely throughout a long and prolific career. His approach focused on the parent-daughter pair of uranium and lead, and his measurements of lead and uranium ratios were global in scope. The table shown here from his paper, “The Association of Lead with Uranium in Rock-Minerals, and its Application to the Measurement of Geological Time” (Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 1911), represents an early result. The most striking features of this table are the antiquity of the listed ages, particularly the “Pre-Cambrian” ages that stretch into the billions of years. Such numbers greatly exceeded any of Lord Kelvin’s calculations. Holmes later estimated, from these and other results, that the Earth was 1-3 billion years old, a number that was of the correct order of magnitude for the consensus age used by modern geologists.
Call Number (click link to view in library catalog)
506 ROPser.A
Authors
Holmes, Arthur
Date
1911
Publisher
Harrison and Son
Location
London
Language
English
Rights
This item was originally published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Intellectual property rights, including copyright, may reside with the materials' creator(s) or their heirs. The content was downloaded from JSTOR on 4/4/2023. JSTOR terms and conditions of use can be found here: https://about.jstor.org/terms/.
Type
Text
Medium
Article
Bibliographic Citation
Holmes, Arthur. “The Association of Lead with Uranium in Rock-Minerals, and its Application to the Measurement of Geological Time”. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A 85 (1911): 248-256.