In the spring of 1943, Rubin enlisted into a University of Chicago run pre-meteorology training program (class "B") for the United States Army Air Forces (AAF); active duty effective March 3, 1943.
He was shipped off first to Port Moresby, New Guinea, and then later to the Philippines, to help forecast weather for AAF long range flights in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Rubin initially assisted in the acetylene preparation, and as a geologist provided valuable input on the selection of samples and interpretation of results.
[7] In the first two years, the laboratory produced approximately 200 14C age determinations, which were critically important to unravel the various details of the most recent Pleistocene glaciation, the Wisconsin stage, among other geological problems.
Experiments showed that snails could uptake 10-12 percent inorganic carbonate from limestone, yielding an uncertainty in the 14C dates of approximately one thousand years.
[22] They found that the contamination was coming from the underlying Claiborne Group, which had relatively low 14C content due to lack of exposure to atmospheric carbon, and not from the nearby ocean.
[23] First publishing together in 1967, George Plafker, Rubin, and their colleagues did painstaking fieldwork after the magnitude 9.2 Alaskan earthquake in 1964, covering hundreds of kilometers of Alaskan shoreline in small boats, helicopters, and float-equipped aircraft after the 1964 quake helped to launch a new field of megathrust earthquake geology, which used observations of the placement and 14C dating of intertidal organisms such as acorn barnacles, mussels and rockweed to determine the amounts of vertical change in land relative to sea level near subduction zones.
These studies by Plafker, Rubin and colleagues were very important evidence for the existence of subduction processes during the early debates of plate tectonics.
[15] In 1973, Rubin dated charcoal from campfires used by Paleo-Indians at Flint Run Complex in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, to be 10,000 years old—the oldest evidence of man in the state at the time.
[29] He worked with Dwight Crandell and Donal R. Mullineaux on their paper published in 1975, which correctly predicted an eruption could occur before the turn of the century.
[30] In 1977, Rubin collaborated with Harry E. Gove and others in early demonstrations of successful 14C measurement using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) at the University of Rochester.
This very exciting epoch in the geologic history of North America was followed chronologically by Rubin in a series a radiocarbon dates, which contributed to publications such as "Great Salt Lake, and precursors, Utah: the last 30,000 years" (1984).
John P. Lockwood and Rubin found that the lake's maar may have been formed by an explosive eruption, and that CO2 could still be trapped under the lake—its gradual release into the waters setting the stage for the tragic gas-release event.
[35] Rubin and colleagues contributed to our understanding of the evolution of Hawaiian volcanoes through hundreds of 14C measurements starting in the late 60's, sample selection refinements, and significant publications in 1987.
[36][37][38][39] Rubin carried out 14C work, in collaboration with Lucio Lirer and Giuseppe Rolandi (University of Naples Federico II), a collaboration arranged by Rubin's long-time friend and fellow geologist Harvey E. Belkin, determining the age of the Breccia Museo (museum breccia), a proximal deposit attributed to the 39,000 BCE eruption of the Campanian Ignimbrite.
Rubin was also close friends with Edward C. T. Chao, who is known for coesite, stishovite, and tektites, as they were both at one time in the USGS Branch of Military Geology, though they had no scientific relationship.