How the work of one researcher, Dr Clair Patterson, brought the fall of leaded gasoline and discovered the age of the Earth!

Time for someone who some have called the greatest scientist you have not heard of. Likely the reason average IQ's have no fallen (even if it feels like they have - idiocracy)!

This is the sibling episode to the last one. The rise of Leaded Gas. This time the story starts with Dr. Clair Patterson a geochemist. Before the PhD and discovering the age of the Earth, Clair Patterson and his wife Laurie (also a chemist) became civilians working on the Manhattan project. No not in New Mexico designing the bomb like depicted in the movie Oppenheimer. Instead they got to work on the problem of concentrating Uranium. A 235U electromagnetic separation plant (figure in the post!) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

From there on to a PhD. The following of the data lead to lead being everywhere. Before advocating for the elimination of lead he developed the  ...