Background
Brent Dalrymple was born on March 7, 1937 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States. He was the son of Jerry Richard and Dorothy (Benedict) Dalrymple.
Brent Dalrymple was born on March 7, 1937 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States. He was the son of Jerry Richard and Dorothy (Benedict) Dalrymple.
Dalrymple attended Occidental College, in his home state of California, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in geology in 1959. He then moved to the University of California, Berkeley, to do his graduate work. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in geology in 1963.
In 1993 he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from his undergraduate alma mater, Occidental College.
Dalrymple's interest in radiometric dating led to the publication of Potassium-Argon Dating, a guide to understanding the principles and techniques involved, which he co-authored with Marvin A. Lanphere in 1969. The book began as an abbreviated pamphlet, but was later expanded into a book by popular request. As the authors note in their preface, the book is not meant to be “a scholarly or comprehensive review” of the topic, but ts instead intended to answer “practical questions of what the method can and cannot do.” Dalrymple began his career as a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Menlo Park, California, in the Branch of Theoretical Geophysics. He remained there until the early 1970s, when he moved to the Branch of Isotope Geology. Between 1981 and 1984, he was an assistant chief geologist for the Western Region of the USGS, during that time he was the principal contact within the USGS for the state geologists of the western states. Since 1984 he has served as a research geologist for the USGS.
During 5 years from 1989 he was a professor of finance University Texas at Pan Am. In 1994 he became a director of Financial Awareness Center.
Throughout his career Dalrymple has been involved in developing new methodology and instrumentation for determining the ages of rocks and minerals.
In addition to his primary research at the U.S. Geological Survey, Dalrymple has served in various roles at Stanford University, including visiting professor, lecturer, research associate, and consulting professor in the school of earth sciences. His affiliation with Stanford was intermittent during the 1970s and 1980s, but has been continuous since 1990.
He served on the Council of Scientific Society Presidents between 1990 and 1992.
Dalrymple left the U.S. Geological Survey in 1994.
Now he is a dean and professor at Oregon State University. He is also an instructor in celestial navigation.
He is currently researching lunar basin history.
Dalrymple's research, clocking geologic time through isotopic dating methods and then applying these findings to a range of geophysical problems, has led to his reputation as one of the leading experts on the age of our planet. His contributions to the science include the development and refinement of potassium-argon dating methods and instruments.
One of Dalrymple’s most significant investigations centers on his work in the 1960s, which proved that the earth’s magnetic field reverses polarity. He and his colleagues Allan Cox and Richard Doell ascertained the time scale of these reversals over the past 3.5 million years. This work resulted in the theory of Plate Tectonics. Science historian William Glen writes of this work and its importance in his book The Road to Jaramillo. Another of Dalrymple’s investigations confirmed the hypothesis that the volcanoes in the Hawaiian-Emperor volcanic chain, which extends from Hawaii to the Aleutian Trench near Siberia, were formed by the Pacific Plate’s motion over a fixed source of lava in the earth’s mantle.
He was the Distinguished Alumni Centennial Speaker at Occidental College in the 1980s.
(This is a definitive, masterly history and synthesis of a...)
1994(How old is Earth? How old are the planets, the Moon, mete...)
Dalrymple is a member of Geological Society of America and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to his role as the president of the American Geophysical Union—a society thirty thousand strong—Dalrymple serves on the board of governors of the American Institute of Physics, and was elected to the executive committee of that institute in 1993.
He was also a member of AAAS, American Geophysics Union and it's president in 1990-1992.
He is in the board of governors of American Institute of Physics from 1991.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences , United States
1992
National Academy of Science
1993
tennis, downhill skiing, sailing
Dalrymple married Diane Marie Molinario on October 29, 1983, they have 3 children: Brent Blake, Junior, Jeremy Benedict.
