John Reynolds (physicist)

Infobox Scientist
name = John Hamilton Reynolds


image_width =
caption = John H. Reynolds
birth_date = birth date|1923|4|3
birth_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
residence =
nationality =
death_date = death date and age|2000|11|4|1923|4|3
death_place = Berkeley, California, United States
field = Geophysics
work_institution = University of Chicago,
University of California, Berkeley
alma_mater = Harvard University,
University of Chicago
doctoral_advisor = Mark Inghram
doctoral_students =
known_for = Discovery of excess meteoritic ¹²⁹Xe
prizes =
religion =
footnotes =

John Hamilton Reynolds [ [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1973Metic...8..291. The Leonard Medal] , "Meteoritics" 8 (1973), pp. 291–293.] (April 3, 1923–November 4, 2000) was an American physicist and a specialist in mass spectroscopy.

Life

John H. Reynolds was born birth date|1923|4|3 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He studied first at Harvard University and, after serving in the Navy during World War II, at the University of Chicago. There, he was influenced by his Ph.D. thesis advisor Mark Inghram and by two other famous physicists, Harold Urey and Enrico Fermi. He specialized in mass spectroscopy and utilized this method to determine isotope ratios needed for the radiometric dating of geologically and cosmologically relevant samples. In 1950 he was appointed as professor to the University of California, Berkeley where he continued his research on isotope ratios in meteorites, leading to the discovery in 1960 that certain meteorites had an excess of xenon-129, [cite journal
title = Isotopic Composition of Primordial Xenon
author = J. H. Reynolds
journal = Physical Review Letters
volume = 4
issue = 7
pages = 351–354
year = 1960
url = http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v4/p351
doi = 10.1103/PhysRevLett.4.351] [cite journal
title = Determination of the Age of the Elements
author = J. H. Reynolds
journal = Physical Review Letters
volume = 4
issue = 1
pages = 8–10
year = 1960
url = http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v4/p8
doi = 10.1103/PhysRevLett.4.8] thought to be a result of the beta decay of iodine-129 in the early solar system. [pp. 400–403, "Radiogenic Isotope Geology", Alan P. Dickin, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0521598915.] His improvement of potassium-argon dating was adopted by several institutions. [http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=hb1r29n709&doc.view=content&chunk.id=div00061&toc.depth=1&brand=oac&anchor.id=0 John H. Reynolds, Physics: Berkeley] , Bruce A. Bolt, Richard E. Packard, and P. Buford Price, in "University of California: In Memoriam, 2000", edited by Micki Conklin, University of California Academic Senate, 2000. Accessed on line October 24, 2007.] [ [http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/jreynolds.html John H. Reynolds] , P. Buford Price, "Biographical Memoirs" 85 (2004), pp. 248–267, Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, ISBN 0-309-10363-0. Accessed on line October 24, 2007. ]

Reynolds was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1968. He died of pneumonia on November 4, 2000 in Berkeley, California, USA.

References