Thomas Edvard Krogh, FRSC (1936 – April 29, 2008) was a geochronologist and a former curator for the Royal Ontario Museum.
Krogh's main focus of research has been geochronology, an effort which has long involved the integration of field work (particularly in high-grade gneisses of the Grenville Province) with clean-laboratory isotope dilution techniques.
With uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating he developed a simple, yet innovative air-abrasion technique for removing exterior portions of minerals that may have suffered Pb-loss, which, combined with improved magnetic separation methods, greatly improved the accuracy and precision of zircon geochronology.
In addition, Krogh's laboratory methods for the dissolution of minerals and the subsequent chemical separation of trace quantities of uranium and lead resulted in a significant reduction of environmental Pb contamination (blank) to ultra-low levels, and permitted increasingly small quantities of mineral grains and sub-grain domains to be analyzed.
In the mid-1980s, he was instrumental in producing a synthetic 205Pb isotopic tracer (spike) that was distributed for use in U-Pb geochronology laboratories worldwide.
The application of Krogh's novel and innovative techniques has revolutionized U-Pb geochronology and permitted the ages of rocks to be determined with unprecedented accuracy and precision.