Minze Stuiver

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.

Professor Minze Stuiver in his office in the Quaternary Isotope Lab at the University of Washington in 1998