Changing Views of the History of the Earth

by Richard Harter
Copyright © 1998-2005
[Last Update: June 1, 1998]

Contents
 Introduction
 Changing Estimates of the Age of the Earth
 Chronology of Writings
 History of Radiometric Dating
 References
 Acknowledgements

Introduction
If, in the year AD 1600, you had asked an educated European how old the planet Earth was and
to recount its history he would have said that it was about 6000 years old and that its ancient
history was given by the biblical account in Genesis.

If you asked the same question of an educated European in AD 1900 you would have received a
quite different answer. He would have answered that the Earth was ancient, that there had not
been a Noachian flood, and that the species of life had not been fixed over the history of Earth.
In short, Genesis was an allegory and not literal history.

The story of this great change in the conception of the history of Earth is not a simple one. The
chronicle of this great change can be broken into five periods;

The pre-scientific period before AD 1600. In the pre-scientific era the Biblical account and the
speculations of the Greek philosophers were accepted without great question.

The era of speculative cosmogonies ran from AD 1600-1700. In this period a number of
comprehensive cosmogonies were proposed. These were long on armchair speculation and short
on substantive supporting evidence. These cosmogonies were part of the new emphasis of
science in seeking rational explanations of the features of the world.
The disestablishment of Genesis ran from AD 1700-1780. This period was marked by a great
deal of field geology rather than grand cosmogonies. It became clear that there had been
significant changes in the Earth's topography over time and that these changes could neither be
accounted for by natural processes operating during the brief nor by the postulated Noachian
flood. Notable observations included:

 Studies of strata suggested that they were laid down by natural processes in which the sea
and land had changed places several times.

 Studies of earthquakes and volcanoes showed that the surface crust is subject to massive
natural transformation.
 Observation of rain, wind, water erosion, and sea erosion in action showed that they were
forces capable of reducing mountains and creating valleys.

The catastrophist-uniformitarian debate ran from about 1780-1850. By the end of the 18'th
century it was clear that the Earth had a long and varied history. Interest in major cosmogony
was revived. The major debate was between the catastrophists, e.g., Cuvier, who held that the
history of Earth was dominated by major catastrophic revolutions and the uniformitarians, e.g.
Hutton and Lyell, who held that the history of Earth was dominated by slow relatively uniform
changes in an Earth with a static over all history. During the early part of this period there was a
considerable amount of activity by scriptural geologists who attempted to reconcile Genesis and
geology. The efforts of the scriptural geologists failed signally; by 1830 scriptural geology was a
dead issue in Science.

The modern period runs from AD 1850 to the present. The great debate was won by the
uniformitarians, so much so that the degree of gradualism was overstated and the importance of
catastrophes was unduly minimized. The modern period has been marked by an enormous
expansion of the detailed knowledge of the geological history of the Earth and the processes that
have acted during that history.

Many authors choose to present the history of a complex subject by breaking it up into major
threads and following the history of each thread separately. I have chosen instead to provide a
chronology of significant works and their authors with a view to providing a sense of how
perspectives on Geology changed over time. The selections and comments here are not a
complete exposition of the works of the authors mentioned; rather they were chosen to illustrate
and exemplify changing perspectives over time.

Estimates of the Age of the Earth

In Europe the issue of the age of the Earth was not a serious one prior to the rise of science; the
history of the Earth was assumed to be accounted for in Genesis. The rise of science produced a
major change in attitude.

In the pre-scientific world view the issue of the age of the Earth was a theological question. The
account in Genesis is replete with miracles that do not stand up under rational analysis. This did
not matter; the theological perspective did not require physical rationalization. It was not ruled
out, per se, but it was not necessary. It was not part of the attitude. In the new science, however,
rational explanation was desirable. Ussher and Descartes illustrate the difference.

In 1640 Ussher produced his famous calculation that the Earth was created in 4004 BC. In 1637
Descartes produced a cosmogony that was highly influential for more than a century. What was
the difference?

It was not in their estimates of the age of the Earth - Descartes retained the biblical date. Ussher
accepted the Biblical account at face value, relying on the Biblical genealogies and on extant
historical records. He implicitly assumed that the world was created much as it is now. Descartes,
however, attempted to discern a physical history of the Earth. His account was plausible by the
immature standards of the Science of his times; however it quite definitely did not match the
Biblical account of a completed creation in six days.

In the 1700's belief in a 6000 year old Earth crumbled. Attempts to calculate the age of the Earth
from physical considerations yielded estimates that ranged from 75,000 years (Buffon, 1774) to
several billion years (de Maillet, Buffon).

The physical models were open to question and, in retrospect, were naive. The geological
evidence was more serious. It became quite clear that many areas of the Earth had alternated
between being land and being covered by seas, that there had been extensive slow sedimentation,
that the mountains had not been created in situ as is but rather had a long history of slow
deformation, and that long periods of erosion had shaped the Earth everywhere.

By the early 1800's it was generally accepted that the Earth had a long history. Its age, however,
was scarcely settled. The uniformatarians (Hutton 1788, Lyell 1830) pictured the Earth as being
indefinitely old.

The catastrophists (Cuvier 1812, de Beaumont 1852, Buckland 1836) accepted that the Earth was
old; they disagreed with the kind of change and the rate of change that had occurred over that
long history.

There was no single estimate of the Earth's age in the mid 1800's and no good way to arrive at
one. There were various attempts to estimate the Earth's age, working back from sedimentation
rates and other geophysical phenomena. The attempts produced estimates from about 100 million
years up to several billion years. There were two major problems with such efforts. The first is
that the geological history was still being reconstructed. The second is that the rates of the
physical processes in question are variable and knowledge of them was incomplete.

In the late 1800's physicists, armed with a more advanced physics than that available to
Descartes, made new estimates of the age of the Earth and the Sun. There were two basic
questions they asked: How long would it take for the Earth to cool from its initial heat of
formation to its present temperature and, given the energy sources known at the time, how long
had the Sun been shining.
In 1862 Kelvin estimated the age of the Earth to be 98 million years, based on a model of the rate
of cooling. This was a minimum acceptable age consistent with geology. Later in 1897 he revised
his estimate downwards to 20-40 million years. This was too short for the geologists to swallow.
Estimates of the age of the Sun were also too small to be consistent with geology.

Kelvin did not know about radioactivity and heating of the Earth's crust by radioactive decay; for
this reason his estimates were completely wrong. Likewise, it wasn't until Einstein's theory of
relativity was developed that there was a good explanation of how the Sun could have been
shining as long as it had.

Prior to the development of radiometric dating geologists established the relative ages of rocks
using stratigraphy (the geological column) and made crude estimates of absolute ages by taking
into account sedimentation and erosion rates. Radiometric dating permits the accurate
determination of absolute dates. The first radiometric dating was done in 1905; it and subsequent
measurements confirmed that the Earth was several billion years old. Currently the best estimate
of the age of the Earth is 4.55 billion years. An extensive chronology of the development of the
radiometric dating is given below in the section Chronology of radiometric dating.

It should be understood that estimating the ages of rocks using radiometric dating is an entirely
separate technique from the radiocarbon (C-14) method for dating organic remains. Radiometric
dating of rocks is based on the decay of long lived isotopes of Potassium, Thorium, and
Uranium. Radiocarbon dating is based on the decay of the short lived C-14 isotope and is
irrelevant to determining the age of the Earth.

Chronology of Writings

1510 Leonardo Da Vinci: Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. In his
notebooks Da Vinci ponders fossil seashells and concludes that they could not have
been laid down by the Noachian flood. He wrote:

"If the Deluge had carried the shells for distances of three and four hundred miles
from the sea it would have carried them mixed with various other natural objects all
heaped up together; but even at such distances from the sea we see the oysters all
together and also the shellfish and the cuttlefish and all the other shells which
congregate together, found all together dead; and the solitary shells are found apart
from one another as we see them every day on the sea-shores.

"And we find oysters together in very large families, among which some may be seen
with their shells still joined together, indicating that they were left there by the sea
and that they were still living when the strait of Gibraltar was cut through. In the
mountains of Parma and Piacenza multitudes of shells and corals with holes may be
seen still sticking to the rocks..."
1594 Loys le Roy: Of the interchangeable course or variety of things in the Whole world.
Le Roy accepted that land and sea could change places and that mountains could be
reduced to plains and vice versa. Le Roy was vague about actual mechanisms. He can
 be considered as a very early uniformitarian.
1625 Nathaniel Carpenter: Geography delineated forth in two Bookes In this early work
Carpenter argued that the Flood could not have been the major agent of geological
change,
1634 Simon Stevin: Second Book of Geology. Stevin followed up Le Roy with arguments
that wind and water sufficed as primary agents.
1637 Rene Descartes: Discours de la Methode. Descartes constructed a history of the Earth
which was quite influential; it was the starting point for many later cosmogonies.
Some of the main points of his system were that the Earth formed as a fiery ball, that
when it cooled a crust formed over the abyssal waters, and that this crust collapsed,
releasing massive volumes of water.
1640 James Ussher: A number of writers calculated the date of creation, using the Biblical
chonologies, astronomical records, and historical chronologies. Of these, Ussher's
date of 4004 BC is the most famous. Other dates include 3928 BC (John Lightfoot,
AD 1644) and 5529 BC (Theophilus of Antioch. AD 169).
1669 Nicholas Steno: The Produmus. Steno did the basic analysis of how fossils got
embedded in stone. From his field observations of the Tuscan landscape he concluded
that the Flood was important but did not completely explain the observed geology.
1681 Thomas Burnet: Sacred Theory of the Earth. Burnet's famous and widely read book
reworked Descartes's speculations to fit the biblical account. In his conception the
antediluvian Earth was a smooth ovoid. Over time the surface dried out and the
abyssal waters were heated. Eventually the surface cracked, releasing the abyssal
waters in the Noachian flood.
1691 John Ray: The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation. Ray reworked
Burnet's cosmogony. One of the notable features of Ray's works was the thought he
put into possible sources for the waters of the flood. Ray accepted that there had been
continuous interchange between land and sea.
1693 Baron Leibnitz: Protogea. Leibnitz reworked Descartes's cosmogony. Protogea was
published much later in 1749.
1695 John Woodward: An essay toward a Natural History of the Earth. Woodward came
down fairly strongly for the view that the flood was an act of God that could not be
accounted for by normal physical processes. He also postulated hydrological sorting
to account for the ordering of fossils.
1696 William Whiston: A new theory of the Earth.... Whiston added comets to Burnet's
cosmogony as the source of the waters of the flood.
1705 Robert Hooke: Lectures and Discourse of Earthquakes and Subterranean Eruptions.
Hooke believed that the fossils were the remains of extinct species and could not be
accounted for by the Flood.
"Asking himself how the present areas of land came to be dry, he answers 'it could be
from the Flood of Noah, since the duration of that which was but about two hundred
 natural days, or half a year could not afford time enough for the production and
perfection of so many and so great and full grown shells, as these which are so found
do testify; besides the quantity and thickness of the beds of sand with which they are
many times found mixed, do argue that there must needs be a much longer time of
seas residence of the seas above same, than so short a space can afford."
1748 Benoit de Maillet: Telliamed, or Conversations between an Indian Philosopher and a
French Missionary on the Diminution of the Sea. Using Descartes's cosmology, the
assumption that the earth was once entirely flooded, and the observation that the sea
level was dropping three inches per century near his home, he calculated the age of
the earth to be greater than 2 billion years.
1771 Peter Pallas: Observation sur la Formation des Montagnards.... Pallas made
extensive observations of Russian mountains. He observed the results of processes
that acted on mountains, e.g. weathering, erosion, deposition, and the fracturing and
upheaval of strata. He argued for occasional catastrophic events as an origin for
mountain building.
1774 Comte de Buffon: Epochs of Nature. Buffon assumed that the earth started molten,
measured cooling rates of iron spheres, scaled up, and calculated the age at ~75,000
years. He himself was suspicious that this was much too young and, in manuscripts
published after his death, suggested longer chronologies, including one estimate of
nearly 3 billion years.
1778 Jean de Luc: Lettres Physique et Morales sur l'Histoire de la Terre et de l'Homme. De
Luc's work is "transitional between the armchair speculation of the seventeenth
century and the hard-nosed empiricism of the nineteenth century." De Luc accepted
the biblical account, including the Noachian flood; however, he assumed that the six
days of creation were six long periods of indefinite duration.
1778 John Whitehurst: An inquiry into the Original State of the Earth. Whitehurst added
the notion of drastic tidal action of the moon to Woodward's cosmogony.
1779 Horace-Benedict de Saussure: Voyages dans les Alpes. De Saussure made extensive
observations of the Alps. He appreciated that curved strata had originally been laid
down as horizontal sheets and were later deformed.
1787 Abraham Werner: Kurze Klassification und Beschreibung der verschiedener
Gebirgsarten. Werner recognized the importance of successive advance and retreat of
the oceans for creating the layers of the Earth.
1788 James Hutton: Theory of the Earth; or, an investigation of the laws observable in the
composition, dissolution and restoration of land upon the globe. Hutton is
traditionally credited with being the father of modern geology. He was the first
modern uniformitarian. Hutton argued that the Earth was of immense antiquity,
cycling through changes via slow processes sans catastrophes. The last sentence of
Hutton's 1788 work is famous and is widely quoted:
The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning
- no prospect of an end.
1794 Robert Townson: Philosophy of Mineralogy. Townson was one of the many
catastrophists of the late 18'th and early 19'th century. He pointed out that fieldwork
had revealed that the features of the surface of the Earth could not be accounted for
by a single Creation and catastrophic flood but rather successions of formation and
dramatic change.
1794 Richard Sullivan: A View of Nature. Sullivan was another catastrophist. He wrote:
Thus succeed revolution to revolution. When the masses of shells were heaped upon
the Alps, then in the bosom of the ocean, there must have been portions of the earth,
unquestionably dry and inhabited; vegetable and animal remains prove it; no stratum
hitherto discovered, with other strata upon it, but has been, at one time or another, the
surface. The sea announces everywhere its different sojournments; and at least yields
conviction that all strata were not formed at the same period.
1799 Robert Kirwan: Geological Essays. Kirwan was a scriptural geologist. Although he
mostly followed the biblical account in his account the formation of the topography
of the Earth took several centuries. Kirwan's virulent attacks on Hutton had the effect
of making Hutton much better known than he otherwise would have been.
1812 James Hall: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Hall argued that
Hutton's water cycles were insufficient to account for large tumbled rocks in the Alps.
He proposed huge waves on a catastrophic scale that moved ice and rock.
1812 Baron de Cuvier: Dicours sur les Revolutions du Globe. Cuvier was the best known
and most influential of the catastrophists. His extensive researches in the geology of
the Paris basin led him to postulate a series of many global catastrophes.
1820 William Buckland: Vindiciae Geologicae. In 1820 Buckland was a scriptural
geologist. Thus he wrote:
Again the grand fact of an universal deluge at no very remote period is proved on
grounds so decisive and incontrovertible, that, had we never heard of such an event
from Scripture, or any other authority, Geology of itself must have called in the
assistance of some such catastrophe, to explain the phenomena of diluvian action
which are universally presented to us, and which are unintelligible without recourse
to a deluge exerting its ravages at a period not more ancient than that announced in
the book of Genesis.
1830 Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology. This was the work that "won" the
catastrophist/uniformitarian debate. Lyell laid down four principles of uniformity:
 Uniformity of law (the natural laws have remained the same)
 Uniformity of process (same causes today as in the past)
 Uniformity of rate (changes occurred at the same rate as now)
 Uniformity of state (the Earth was much the same in the past as it is now)

In modern Geology it is generally recognized that Lyell claimed too much in the last
three principles. Drastic changes, albeit not as all embracing as those envisioned by
the catastrophist, occur from time to time. There have been significant changes in
state due to such factors as declining strength of the radioactive sources of heat, the
acquisition of oxygen as a major atmospheric component, the colonization of land by
 life, plate tectonics, and asteroid bombardment.
1836 William Buckland: Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to natural
Theology. By 1836 Buckland had abandoned the Noachian flood as a source of major
geological change. Instead he postulated numerous antediluvian catastrophes.
1852 Jean Baptiste de Beaumont: Notice sur des Systemes de Montagnes. De Beaumont
was a relatively late catastrophist. He argued that as the Earth cools its volume slowly
reduces. The shrinkage causes the formation of mountains via catastrophic crumpling
of the surface.
1857 Hugh Miller: The Testimony of the Rocks. Miller was a very popular creationist
geologist. He believed that the Noachian flood was a local flood in the Mideast and
did not credit the theory that the Earth was young. On page 324 he wrote:
"No man acquainted with the general outlines of Palaeontology, or the true succession
of the sedimentary formations, has been able to believe, during the last half century,
that any proof of a general deluge can be derived from the *older* geologic systems,
-- Palaeozoic, Secondary [Mesozoic], or Tertiary."
1862 Lord Kelvin: On the Secular Cooling of the Earth. Using thermodynamic principles
and measurements of thermal conductivity of rocks, Kelvin calculated that the earth
consolidated from a molten state 98 million years ago. In 1897, he revised his
estimate to 20-40 million years. Dalrymple says that Kelvin's estimates were "highly
authoritative" for three decades, but notes that they were challenged by people from
several fields, including T. H. Huxley, John Perry (a physicist), and T. C.
Chamberlain (a geologist). All of them challenged the likelihood of Kelvin's
assumptions.
1893 Charles D. Walcott: Geologic Time, as Indicated by the Sedimentary Rocks of North
America. Walcott takes a detailed look at the Paleozoic sediments of the Cordilleran
Sea (just east of the Sierra Nevadas), considering such things as the land area
supplying sediments and the grain sizes of the sediments. He arrived at an estimate of
17.5 million years for the Paleozoic and, based on various other authors' estimates of
relative ages of the other eras, 55 million years for the earth.
1905 Ernest Rutherford: In the Silliman Lectures at Yale, Rutherford suggested using
radioactivity as a geological timekeeper. The idea was good but there were practical
problems. Initially little was known about the physics and chemistry of radioactive
elements. Instrumentation had to be improved. The next section is a chronology of
key events in working out the age of the Earth using radiometric dating.

Chronology of Radiometric Dating

By Chris Stassen (with much owed to Dalrymple's The Age of the Earth)
Thanks also to Richard Harter for much help.

The period 1896-1905 marks the discovery of radioactivity and the realization that rocks could
be dated by radioactive decay.
1896 A. Henri Becquerel discovers that uranium-bearing compounds emit invisible
rays similar to X-rays. (X-rays had been discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm
Roentgen.)
1898 Marie and Pierre Curie coin the term "radioactivity," prove that radioactivity is a
property of atoms (as opposed to molecular composition), discover radioactivity
of thorium, and identify a few of the intermediate products of the uranium and
thorium decay series.
1902 Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy demonstrate the exponential nature of
radioactive decay.
1905 In a lecture at Harvard, Ernest Rutherford suggests that uranium/helium or
uranium/lead ratios could theoretically be used to compute the age of rocks.

At this point the phenomenon of radioactive decay was still very poorly understood. The
intermediate products and end-products were not known with certainty. The decay rates were
entirely unknown, except for that of radium (a short-lived intermediate product which the Curies
had identified and isolated). Researchers were unaware that there can be multiple isotopes of the
same element, each with a different decay rate.

However, this did not prevent geologists from making several uranium/helium and uranium/lead
measurements over the next few years. In many cases the work was done on rocks whose relative
ages were known independently, in order to assess whether or not the element ratios correlated
with relative age. It was discovered that uranium/helium is not generally reliable because helium
is not retained consistently.

1907 B.B. Boltwood takes measurements that indicate lead to be a final product of
uranium decay, for its abundance is strongly correlated with relative age of
uranium-bearing minerals. Boltwood attempts some simple uranium/lead ages,
extrapolating the uranium decay rate from the assumption of decay equilibrium
and the previously measured radium decay rate. (When a decay series has
reached equilibrium, the ratio of the quantity of elements present is equal to the
ratio of their decay rates.)
1911 Arthur Holmes publishes several uranium/lead ages based mostly on
measurements taken by Boltwood and an improved value for the uranium decay
rate. These range from 340 million years (a Carboniferous sample), to 1,640
million years (a Precambrian sample).

Holmes' calculations are called chemical ages (as opposed to isotope ages) because they are
derived from ratios of elements without regard to isotopes. In 1911 geologists did not know
about isotopes, or about all of the intermediate decay products in between uranium and lead, or
that lead was also produced by the decay of thorium. As a result of not compensating for those
(then-unknown) factors, the computed ages are too high.
Even though Holmes' ages are incorrect, they eventually prove to be much better estimates than
the best ones previously available to geologists (which were based on non-uniform and
unreliable processes such as rates of sedimentation). Holmes' ages for Phanerozoic (Cambrian or
later) samples are within 20% of the values given by modern methods. In the early 1900s,
however, Holmes' results appeared to be at odds with other methods in common use, and they
were not met with immediate acceptance from all quarters.

1913 J.J. Thompson observes that neon atoms have two different atomic weights (20
and 22), using equipment he calls a "positive-ray" apparatus. The existence of
isotopes is confirmed. Unfortunately, it would take a long time to accumulate
significant knowledge on the isotopes relevant to geological dating. Chemical
dating methods won't entirely give way to isotope dating methods until almost
1940.
1917 J. Barrell publishes a Phanerozoic time scale based on chemical ages produced
by Holmes (1911), and interpolations involving less quantitative methods. The
divisions in the time scale fall fairly close to today's accepted values. For
example, Barrell placed the Cenozoic-Mesozoic (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary
at 55-65 million years ago (today's value: 65 million years ago), and the base of
the Cambrian at 360-540 million years ago (today's value: 570 million years
ago).
1920 F.W. Aston improves upon Thompson's (1913) positive-ray apparatus, and
invents what he calls a "mass spectrograph." Using this device, he discovers a
third isotope of neon with atomic weight 21. Aston devotes the remainder of his
life to improving the design and precision of his device, and over time discovers
212 of the 287 naturally occurring isotopes.

The early period was one of developing knowledge and technique and of assessing the ages of
individual rocks and formations. However, researchers were beginning to realize that the same
methods hold promise for assessing the Earth's age.

Calculating an age for the Earth introduces additional complexity: even if it is a given that
accurate ages for rocks can be obtained, there is no guarantee that the age of any given rock
would be the age of the Earth. It would be necessary to either find rocks which formed at the
same time as the Earth, or else come up with dating techniques that could "look back" through
more recent events to the Earth's formation.

1921 Henry Russell calculates a maximum chemical age of eight billion years for the
Earth's crust, based on estimates of its total uranium and lead content. Using the
age of the oldest known (at that time) Precambrian minerals as a minimum for
the Earth's age, Russell said:
Taking the mean of this and the upper limit found above from the ratio of
uranium to lead, we obtain 4 x 109 years as a rough approximation to the age of
the Earth's crust.
(Russell 1921, quoted in Dalrymple 1991)
1927 Arthur Holmes publishes a booklet on the age of the Earth, which becomes fairly
popular. The booklet contains a revised version of Russell's calculation, based on
different estimates of the total quantity of uranium and lead in the Earth's crust.
Holmes suggests that the age of the Earth is between 1.6 and 3 billion years.
Twenty years after the first serious attempts at radioactive-decay ages (Boltwood
1907), the total number of computed mineral ages is still small enough that
Holmes can summarize them all in one short table.

In between 1921 (Russell's estimate) and roughly World War II, a number of similar chemical
ages for the Earth's crust were computed and published. These include: 3.4 billion years
(Rutherford 1929); 4.6 billion years (Meyer 1937); and 3 to 4 billion years (Starik 1937).

1927b F.W. Aston makes the first measurements of the isotopic ratios of "common
lead." At this time it was already known that lead found in association with
uranium had a relatively low atomic weight, but it seemed that all other lead
(known as "common lead") had the same atomic weight. (The lighter atomic
weight of lead in association with uranium is due to enrichment in 206Pb from
decay of 238U. 206Pb is lighter than the atomic weight of common lead, which is
about 207.2.)
1937 Alfred Nier begins to make a series of careful measurements on the isotopic
composition of common lead. He discovers that the isotopic ratios of common
lead can vary significantly, even in cases where the atomic weight does not.
The most common radiogenic lead isotopes -- 208Pb (from 232Th) and 206Pb
(from 238U) -- have on average roughly the same atomic weight as "common
lead." As long as both are added in approximately equal amounts, the isotopic
composition (relative to 204Pb) would be changed but the atomic weight would
not.
Nier concludes that the variations in isotopic composition of "common lead"
are due to mixture in varying degrees between radiogenic lead and "primeval"
lead (which existed in a fixed, but at this point in time unknown, isotopic ratio
at the time of formation of the Earth).
1941 Alfred Nier obtains and measures some ancient Pb ores which have the lowest
207
Pb/204Pb and 206Pb/204Pb ratios of any rocks found to date. (204Pb is not
produced by radioactive decay, while all other stable isotopes of lead are. The
lower the ratio of other lead isotopes to 204Pb, the less radiogenic lead is
present.) Nier speculates that these represent approximately the "primeval" Pb
isotope ratios.
1941b E. Gerling uses Nier's (1941) "primeval" lead isotope ratios to create lead
isotopic growth curves, and uses these to estimate a minimum age for the
Earth's crust of 3.2 billion years. In doing so, Gerling devises the basic
technique which will eventually produce an accurate age for the Earth and solar
system.
Unfortunately, Gerling's original calculations are incorrect primarily because
Nier's ancient lead ore is not truly "primeval" in composition. Though Gerling's
 result is within 30% of the actual age of the Earth, it is merely a good
measurement of the age of Nier's samples rather than the age of the planet
itself.
1944 During World War II, intense research on the atomic bomb leads to fantastic
improvements in equipment for identifying and analyzing isotopes. It becomes
possible to detect minute quantities of specific isotopes, and to measure their
abundance with high precision.
1946 Alfred Nier improves on the design of the mass spectrometer and his machine
shop builds dozens of the devices. The widespread availability of this
equipment allows a much larger number of researchers to enter into the study
of isotope geology. By the early 1950s, universities all over the world have
laboratories dedicated to performing isotopic age assessments.
1946b Arthur Holmes produces calculations based on Nier's (1941) data. Holmes was
unaware of Gerling's (1941b) work and attempted a slightly different
technique. Holmes' computations result in a wide range of values; when plotted
on a histogram, an obvious peak in the measurements occurs at about 3.3
billion years (a figure similar to Gerling's).
Holmes' computation involves the assumption that lead on Earth had been
separated once long ago and the individual units had been allowed to evolve
along independent isotopic growth curves. Due to that assumption being
incorrect, Holmes mis-interprets scatter around a single growth curve as a
number of independent growth curves. His work on tracing the "independent"
curves back to their mutual intersection does not yield meaningful results.
1946c F. Houtermans independently performs calculations that are similar to Holmes'
(1946b) and flawed in essentially the same way. His work is noteworthy in that
he is the first to emphasize that the data on different isotopic growth curves
would be co-linear if they started at the same point, and for these lines he coins
the term "isochrones" (now known as "isochrons").

By 1946 equipment and understanding of the decay process are sufficiently mature to generate
an accurate assessment of the age of the Earth. It had been amply established that isotope dating
can yield precise and meaningful results. However, the major remaining problem is still the same
as that of almost thirty years prior: exactly how to apply the techniques, and what to apply them
to, in order to obtain an age for the Earth.

The evaluation of lead isotopic growth curves (somewhat unfairly to Gerling, known as the
Holmes-Houtermans Model) holds promise, for it can look back through recent events to a point
of origin. However, the key -- and still missing -- data needed in order to use such a method
would be the lead isotopic ratios at the time of the Earth's formation (i.e., that of "primeval"
lead).

1953 Clair C. Patterson produces accurate "primeval" lead isotopic measurements

from minerals of the Canyon Diablo meteorite which contain very little (less
 than ten parts per billion) uranium. Meteorites provide the final solution to the
puzzle, for they both are "rocks which formed at the same time as the Earth,"
and provide the important data which allows lead isotope computations to look
back to the formation of the Earth. There had previously been no way to
directly assess the age of the Earth; once meteorites were involved, suddenly
there were several independent means.

In a recent issue of the Caltech Alumni Magazine, Clair Patterson discussed the
ideas that led up to the measurement:

[Harrison] Brown had worked out this concept that the lead in iron
meteorites was the kind of lead that was in the solar system when it was
first formed, and that it was preserved in iron meteorites without
change from uranium decay, because there is no uranium in iron
meteorites. [...]
There are two isotopes of uranium that decayed to two different
isotopes of lead, and there's also thorium, which decays to another
isotope of lead. So you have three different isotopes of lead. And the
whole thing gets mixed up. You've got all these separate age equations
for the different isotopes of uranium and different isotopes of lead that
were formed. [...] If we only knew what the isotopic composition of
primordial lead was in the Earth at the time it formed, we could take
that number and stick it into this marvelous equation that the atomic
physicists had worked out. And you could turn the crank and blip--out
would come the age of the Earth.
(Patterson 1997)
1953b F.G. Houtermans uses Patterson's (1953) data and the lead isotopic ratios of
young terrestrial sediments, to compute a rough age for the Earth of 4.5 ± 0.3
billion years. These represent the first publication of the right value by a valid
calculation.
However, Houtermans' calculations are essentially isochrons based on two data
points (one data point for iron meteorites, another for young terrestrial
sediments). Without additional data to tie the Earth and meteorites to a
common source, the computed values are not guaranteed to be meaningful.
1956 Clair C. Patterson publishes an isochron age for the solar system (and therefore
the Earth) of 4.55 ± 0.07 billion years. The age computation is based on Pb
isotope analysis of five meteorites. Patterson points out that data for young
Earth sediments fall on the same isochron; this implies that the Earth shares a
common origin with the dated meteorites. Though only a few meteorites had
been dated at this point in time, and the individual meteorite ages that did exist
were not very precise, they also agree with the isochron age.
1998 A lot of data has been collected since Patterson's (1953, 1956) and Houtermans'
(1953b) works. Precision of instruments has improved. Many more meteorites
have been sampled and dated. Moon rocks have been sampled and dated.
 Decay constants have been measured with more accuracy. New techniques
have been devised, tested, and applied.

The arrival of this new data has two effects: (1) some new data can be used to
improve the precision of the original computations; and (2) new independent
measurements confirm the original ones. Purely by coincidence, all of the
adjustments (for example, current values of decay constants) to Patterson's
1956 computation have canceled each other out. Today's best estimate of the
age of meteorites (4.55 ± 0.02 billion years) is identical to Patterson's value
except for the smaller error range. That value has been confirmed dozens of
times over.

The best estimate of the age of the Earth today is the same as that for
meteorites: 4.55 ± 0.02 billion years. In the event that one wishes to be extra
cautious in reporting a value, using the very generous error range of 4.5 ± 0.1
billion years is almost certain to encompass future changes as well.

For further detail on this topic, I strongly recommend G. Brent Dalrymple's

The Age of the Earth.

References
Most of the references and quotations in the Chronology have been been taken from the
Catastrophism by Richard Huggett. This work is a synoptic view of changing perspectives both
of change in the inorganic and organic world. Dalrymple's Age of the Earth is a standard source
for understanding how the age of the Earth is determined.

Russell, H.N., 1921. A superior limit to the age of the Earth's crust in Proceedings of the Royal
Society of London, series A, vol. 99, pp. 84-86.

Dalrymple, G. Brent, 1991. The Age of the Earth. California: Stanford University Press, ISBN 0-
8047-1569-6.

Richard Huggett, Catastrophism, 1997, Verso, ISBN 1-85984-129-5.

Hugh Miller, The Testimony of the Rocks, 1857, Gould and Lincoln: Boston

Patterson, C.C., 1953. "The isotopic composition of meteoritic, basaltic and oceanic leads, and
the age of the Earth" in Proceedings of the Conference on Nuclear Processes in Geologic
Settings, Williams Bay, Wisconsin, September 21-23, 1953. pp. 36-40.

Patterson, Clair C., 1997. Duck Soup and Lead in Engineering & Science (Caltech Alumni
Magazine) volume LX, number 1, pp. 21-31.
Russell, H.N., 1921. A superior limit to the age of the Earth's crust in Proceedings of the Royal
Society of London, series A, vol. 99, pp. 84-86.

Acknowledgements
I particularly want to thank Mark Isaak who supplied a number of references which were not
available to me, Chris Stassen for supplying the section on the history of radiometric dating, and
Andrew MacRae who supplied information about Hugh Miller's The Testimony of the Rocks.

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