He helped transform radiocarbon dating from a simple tool for archaeology and geology to a precise technique with applications in solar physics, oceanography, geochemistry, and carbon dynamics.
In 1959, together with his wife, Anneke, Minze went to Yale University for a one-year fellowship position but was called back to Groningen to take over as director of the radiocarbon facility when De Vries died.
There he built the Quaternary Isotope Lab with a lead-lined room 30 feet below ground to shield the hand-built gas counters from detecting spurious events due to cosmic rays.
[11][12][13][14] In the mid-1980s he led the development of the first high-precision radiocarbon calibration curve extending back nearly 10,000 years ago based on 14C measurements of tree-rings with known calendar ages from dendrochronology.
Their sub-annual resolution stable isotopes measurements provided confirmation of the rapid nature of major climatic changes at the end of the last glaciation.