Prestigious Award for Stefan Schouten

18-01-2012   This week, the Geochemical Society announced that NIOZ scientist Prof. Stefan Schouten has been granted the prestigious C.C. Patterson Award. Schouten has been granted this award for his many contributions to organic geochemistry, and more specifically to the development of a so-called paleothermometer. The award will be presented during the V.M. Goldschmidt Conference in Montréal at the end of June.

Research by Stefan Schouten and his colleagues included work on the development of a ‘paleothermometer’, called TEX86. Schouten established sea temperatures in the past on the basis of the chemical structure of lipids in cell membrane in archaea. This technique is now widely used, for instance on sediment cores from the Arctic Ocean, which showed that about 70 million years ago sea water temperatures must have been around 15ºC.

The Clair C. Patterson Award is presented annually to someone who has achieved an innovative breakthrough in the field of geochemistry. The award is usually granted to someone working in the field of inorganic geochemistry. Schouten said 'it is wonderful for this field of science that the award is now granted to someone working in the field of organic geochemistry'.

C.C. Patterson (1922-1995) developed a dating method based on uranium and lead isotopes. He used this method for dating the Canyon Diablo meteorite and calculated an age for the Earth of 4.55 billion years. This figure was far more accurate than other estimates at the time and it remained unchanged for over 50 years.

Press release 2004 about the TEX86 paleothermometer (in Dutch)
C.C. Patterson Award