Robert Norman Clayton FRS (March 20, 1930 – December 30, 2017) was a Canadian-American chemist and academic.
Clayton studied cosmochemistry and held a joint appointment in the university's geophysical sciences department.
Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Clayton grew up in a working-class family that supported (but could not pay for) his pursuit of higher education.
[1] After graduating from Queen's University with undergraduate and master's degrees, Clayton completed a Ph.D. in 1955 at the California Institute of Technology, where he was mentored by geochemist Samuel Epstein.
In 1958, he joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Chicago, where he took over the laboratory of Nobel Prize winner Harold Urey.
[1] He was aided in his research by Toshiko Mayeda, who was a specialist technician familiar with the mass spectrometry equipment required.
[12] Clayton and Mayeda studied the Achondrite meteorites and showed that variations in the oxygen isotope ratios within a planet are due to inhomogeneities in the solar nebula.