Hessel de Vries

Hessel de Vries (Nov 15 1916, Annen - Dec 23 1959, Groningen), was a Dutch physicist at the University of Groningen who furthered the detection methods and applications of radiocarbon dating to a variety of sciences. He has been called "the unsung hero of radiocarbon dating" by Willis.

In 1958, de Vries showed that there were systematic anomalies in the carbon-14 dates of tree rings. His explanation was that the concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere had varied over time by up to 1%. He hypothesized that the variation might be explained by (a) something connected with climate, (b) that it was not created in the atmosphere at a uniform rate due to variations in the Earth's magnetic field, or (c) a cause lay in the Sun itself.

References

* Willis, E.H. (1996), "Radiocarbon dating in Cambridge: some personal recollections. A Worm's Eye View of the Early Days", [http://www.quaternary.group.cam.ac.uk/history/radiocarbon/]
*"de Vries, Hessel (1916-1959)," by J. J. M. Engels [http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BWN/lemmata/bwn5/vriesh]
* "The Discovery of Global Warming," by Spencer Weart [http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radioc.htm]

External links

* [http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BWN/lemmata/bwn5/vriesh Biography] (in Dutch)

ee also

*Carbon-14