24 Facts About Bertram Boltwood

Bertram Borden Boltwood was an American pioneer of radiochemistry.

Bertram Boltwood established that lead was the final decay product of uranium, noted that the lead-uranium ratio was greater in older rocks and, acting on a suggestion by Ernest Rutherford, he was the first to measure the age of rocks by the decay of uranium to lead, in 1907.

Bertram Boltwood was born on July 27,1870, in the Amherst, Massachusetts home of his grandfather, Lucius Boltwood.

Bertram Boltwood was a founder of Amherst College and ran for Governor of Massachusetts as an early member of the Liberty Party in 1841.

Thomas Kast Boltwood, son of Lucius, was a lawyer who died in 1872 when his son Bertram was 2 years old.

Bertram Boltwood was emotionally close with his mother, Margaret Mathilda, and he grew up in her hometown of Castleton, NY.

Bertram Boltwood prepared him to attend Yale, his father's alma mater, by placing him in private school at a young age, followed by the Albany Academy.

Bertram Boltwood's childhood reveals influences and inclinations that foreshadow the scientist he became as an adult.

Bertram Boltwood's personality was reportedly light-hearted, and he was known to play practical jokes in his youth.

Bertram Boltwood was often reminded of a familial tie to Ralph Waldo Emerson through his paternal great grandmother's sister, and it was expected that Boltwood would study and succeed in line with the family legacy.

Bertram Boltwood's teaching and research work at Yale focused on physical chemistry, despite it being a relatively new field.

Bertram Boltwood worked as a consulting chemist, analyzing ore samples for miners.

In 1906, Bertram Boltwood returned to Yale as an assistant professor of physics at a time when the newly discovered science of radioactivity was considered both chemistry and physics.

Bertram Boltwood developed a friendship with Ernest Rutherford, whose highly influential thinking played a role in much of Boltwood's work.

Bertram Boltwood is credited as being the first to introduce a uranium-lead dating technique to determine the age of geological samples.

Bertram Boltwood dated a sample of fergusonite at 40 million years, with the caveat that helium could escape and would therefore only provide a minimum age.

Bertram Boltwood published a single paper on radiometric dating, instead focusing the majority of his research on the uranium decay series.

Bertram Boltwood's attempts were unsuccessful, and he suspected a long half life would make it impossible to "grow" radium in a measurable amount.

Bertram Boltwood was able to prove that ionium disintegrates to radium, and the full connection to uranium was shown in work by Frederick Soddy in 1919.

Once Bertram Boltwood was offered a full professorship and chair of radiochemistry position at Yale in 1910, his career became more academic and he no longer actively pursued research.

Bertram Boltwood was elected to both the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society in 1911.

Bertram Boltwood was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1913.

In 1918, Bertram Boltwood became the director of Yale College chemical laboratory.

Bertram Boltwood returned with renewed zeal and continued his work, but fell into periods of depression over the following years.