Harmon Craig, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Harmon Craig

American chemist

Date of Birth: 15-Mar-1926

Place of Birth: New York City, New York, United States

Date of Death: 14-Mar-2003

Profession: chemist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Pisces

Harmon Craig (March 15, 1926 – March 14, 2003) was an American geochemist who worked briefly for the University of Chicago (1951-1955) before spending the majority of his career at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (1955-2003).Craig has been involved in numerous research expeditions, which have visited the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, the crater of Loihi, the Afar Depression of Ethiopia, Greenland's ice cores, and Yellowstone's geysers, among many others.
This has caused him to be described as "the Indiana Jones of the earth sciences", someone "whose overriding impulse was to get out and see the world they were studying".Craig has made many significant discoveries in geochemistry.
He is credited with establishing the field of carbon isotope geochemistry by characterizing carbon's stable isotopic signatures in various natural materials.
This had immediate applications in radiocarbon dating.
By studying stable and radioactive carbon isotopes in the biosphere and air-sea system, he derived the atmospheric residence time of carbon dioxide with respect to oceanic uptake.
His work laid the foundation for isotopic studies of the carbon cycle, and was fundamental to understanding carbon sequestering in the oceanic and the terrestrial biosphere and the modulation of global warming. In addition, from 1969 to 1989, Harmon Craig served as an editor for Earth and Planetary Science Letters.