Bertram boltwood biography of michael jordan

American radiochemistry pioneer

Bertram Borden Boltwood (July 27, Amherst, Massachusetts – August 15, , Hancock Point, Maine) was an American pioneer of radiochemistry.

Boltwood attended Yale University, became a professor there and in was appointed chair of the first academic department of radiochemistry.^[1] He established that lead (the metal) was the final decay product of uranium, noted that the lead-uranium ratio was greater in older rocks and, acting on a suggestion by Ernest Rutherford, he was the first to measure the age of rocks by the decay of uranium to lead, in He obtained results of to &#;million years, the first successful use of radioactive decay by Pb/U chemical dating.

More recently, older mineral deposits have been dated to about &#;billion years old, close to the best estimate of the age of Earth.^[2]

His work with the uranium decay series led to the discovery of the parent of radium, a new element that he named ionium.