Grenville Turner facts for kids

Grenville Turner (born November 1, 1936, in Todmorden) is a smart scientist and a research professor at the University of Manchester. He is known as one of the first people to really explore cosmochemistry, which is the study of the chemistry of the universe.

Grenville Turner's Education

Grenville Turner went to Todmorden Grammar School. He also studied at St. John's College, Cambridge and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1962, he earned his D.Phil. degree. This is like a PhD from Oxford University. His studies focused on nuclear physics.

Grenville Turner's Career

Professor Turner has worked at several famous universities.

• From 1962 to 1964, he was an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
• He then worked at the University of Sheffield from 1964 to 1988. He started as a lecturer and became a full professor.
• In 1970 and 1971, he was a research associate at Caltech.
• Since 1988, he has been a professor of isotope geochemistry at the University of Manchester. This means he studies the chemical makeup of Earth and space using special elements called isotopes.
• He also helped guide important science groups like the SERC.

Amazing Scientific Discoveries

Professor Turner has been a very important scientist in cosmochemistry since the 1960s. He studies the chemical history of the universe.

Dating Rocks from Space

He did amazing work with special gases found in meteorites. This led him to create a method called argon–argon dating. This method helped scientists figure out how old meteorites are. It also gave exact dates for rocks brought back from the Moon by the Apollo missions. Professor Turner was one of the few UK scientists who got to study these Apollo samples directly.

How Argon Dating Works

His argon-dating method involved heating rocks step by step. This forced out the argon gas inside them. Then, he used a machine called a mass spectrometer to measure the different types of argon. Later, he made this method even better by using lasers. These techniques are super helpful for scientists who study rocks from Earth and space. They have been used to find the age of diamonds and other rocks from Earth's mantle and crust.

Even Better Dating Methods

Professor Turner kept inventing new ways to date materials. He developed a technique called iodine-xenon chronology. He used lasers to measure tiny samples, sometimes with only a few thousand atoms of xenon. This allowed him to get accurate information from very small pieces, like individual chondrules found in meteorites. He could even see how heat or other changes affected these samples over time.

Studying Martian Meteorites

He also set up the first ion microprobe in the United Kingdom. This special machine was used to study materials from space. He used it to look at a Martian meteorite called ALH 84001. His findings helped explain how certain parts of that meteorite formed.

A Leader in Space Science

Professor Turner helped start the UK Cosmochemical Analysis Network. This is a group of labs that work together to study materials from space. Even though he has officially retired, he is still an active researcher. In 2004, he announced a new method using plutonium and xenon to date materials from Earth.

Awards and Honors

Professor Turner has received many important awards for his scientific work:

• He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980. This is a very high honor for scientists.
• He received the Rumford Medal from the Royal Society in 1996.
• He was awarded the Leonard Medal by the Meteoritical Society in 1999.
• In 2002, he received the Urey Medal from the European Association of Geochemistry.
• He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for geophysics in 2004.