When Clair Patterson set out in 1948 to measure the age of the Earth using lead in meteorites, his samples kept coming back contaminated, and the seven-year det... (opens in new tab)

In 1948, Clair Patterson was a graduate student at the University of Chicago with a deceptively simple assignment from his advisor Harrison Brown: measure the age of the Earth by counting lead isotopes in meteorites. Brown told him the work would be “duck soup.” It was not. Every sample Patterson touched in his dusty corner […]