The Rosetta Stone of isotope science and the uranium/lead system.

The nucleosynthetic characteristics of U and Pb, together with the interconnectivity between these elements by two radioactive decay chains, are the foundation on which the U/Pb system was able to make a unique contribution to isotope science. The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian tablet that enabled previously indecipherable hieroglyphics to be translated. In a similar manner, the isotopic investigation of the U/Pb system, by a variety of mass spectrometric instrumentation, has led to our knowledge of the age of the Earth and contributed to thermochronology. In a similar manner, climate change information has been garnered by utilizing the U-Disequilibrium Series to measure the ages of marine archives. The impact of Pb in the environment has been demonstrated in human health, particularly at the peak of leaded petrol consumption in motor vehicles in the 1970s. Variations in the isotopic composition of lead in samples enable the source of the lead to be "fingerprinted" so as to trace the history of the Pb in ice cores and aerosols. The discovery of nuclear fission of (235)U led to the development of nuclear reactors and the isotopic investigation of the Oklo natural reactors. The mass spectrometer is the modern Rosetta Stone of isotope science, which has enabled the isotopic hieroglyphics of the U/Pb system to be investigated to reveal new horizons in our understanding of nature, and to address a number of societal and environmental problems.

Nuclear applications of inorganic mass spectrometry.

There are several basic characteristics of mass spectrometry that are not always fully appreciated by the science community. These characteristics include the distinction between relative and absolute isotope abundances, and the influence of isotope fractionation on the accuracy of isotopic measurements. These characteristics can be illustrated in the field of nuclear physics with reference to the measurement of nuclear parameters, which involve the use of enriched isotopes, and to test models of s-, r-, and p-process nucleosynthesis. The power of isotope-dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS) to measure trace elements in primitive meteorites to produce accurate Solar System abundances has been essential to the development of nuclear astrophysics. The variety of mass spectrometric instrumentation used to measure the isotopic composition of elements has sometimes been accompanied by a lack of implementation of basic mass spectrometric protocols which are applicable to all instruments. These metrological protocols are especially important in atomic weight determinations, but must also be carefully observed in cases where the anomalies might be very small, such as in studies of the daughter products of extinct radionuclides to decipher events in the early history of the Solar System. There are occasions in which misleading conclusions have been drawn from isotopic data derived from mass spectrometers where such protocols have been ignored. It is important to choose the mass spectrometer instrument most appropriate to the proposed experiment. The importance of the integrative nature of mass spectrometric measurements has been demonstrated by experiments in which long, double beta decay and geochronological decay half-lives have been measured as an alternative to costly radioactive-counting experiments. This characteristic is also illustrated in the measurement of spontaneous fission yields, which have accumulated over long periods of time. Mass spectrometry is also a valuable tool in the determination of neutron capture cross-section measurements and the application of such determinations in Planetary Science.

The role of mass spectrometry in atomic weight determinations.

The 1914 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Theodore Richards, whose work provided an insight into the history of the birth and evolution of matter as embedded in the atomic weights. However, the secret to unlocking the hieroglyphics contained in the atomic weights is revealed by a study of the relative abundances of the isotopes. A consistent set of internationally accepted atomic weights has been a goal of the scientific community for over a century. Atomic weights were originally determined by chemical stoichiometry--the so-called "Harvard Method," but this methodology has now been superseded by the "physical method," in which the isotopic composition and atomic masses of the isotopes comprising an element are used to calculate the atomic weight with far greater accuracy than before. The role of mass spectrometry in atomic weight determinations was initiated by the discovery of isotopes by Thomson, and established by the pioneering work of Aston, Dempster, and Nier using sophisticated mass spectrographs. The advent of the sector field mass spectrometer in 1947, revolutionized the application of mass spectrometry for both solids and gases to other fields of science including atomic weights. Subsequently, technological advances in mass spectrometry have enabled atomic masses to be determined with an accuracy better than one part in 10(7), whilst the absolute isotopic composition of many elements has been determined to produce accurate values of their atomic weights. Conversely, those same technological developments have revealed significant variations in the isotope abundances of many elements caused by a variety of physiochemical mechanisms in natural materials. Although these variations were initially seen as an impediment to the accuracy with which atomic weights could be determined, it was quickly realized that nature had provided a new tool to investigate physiochemical and biogeochemical mechanisms in nature, which could be exploited by precise and accurate isotopic measurements. Atomic weights can no longer be regarded as constants of nature, except for the monoisotopic elements whose atomic weights are determined solely by the relative atomic mass of that nuclide. Stable isotope geochemists developed mass spectrometric protocols by the adoption of internationally accepted reference materials for the light elements, to which measurements from various laboratories could be compared. Subsequently, a number of heavy elements such as iron, molybdenum and cadmium have been shown to exhibit isotope fractionation. The magnitude of such isotope fractionation in nature is less than for the light elements, but technological developments, such as multiple collector-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry, have enabled such fractionation effects to be determined. Measurements of the atomic weights of certain elements affect the determination of important fundamental constants such as the Avogadro Constant, the Faraday Constant and the Universal Gas Constant. Heroic efforts have been made to refine the accuracy of the atomic weight of silicon, with the objective of replacing the SI standard of mass--the kilogram--with the Avogadro Constant. Improvements in these fundamental constants in turn affect the set of self-consistent values of other basic constants through a least-squares adjustment methodology. Absolute isotope abundances also enable the Solar System abundances of the s-, r-, and p-process of nucleosynthesis to be accurately determined, thus placing constraints on theories of heavy element nucleosynthesis. Future developments in the science of atomic weight determinations are also examined.

Alfred Nier and the sector field mass spectrometer.

Science and technology are intimately related, and advances in science often become possible with the availability of new instrumentation. This has certainly been the case in mass spectrometry, which is used in so many scientific disciplines. Originally developed as an instrument for research in physics it was used in the discovery of isotopes, their recognition as the fundamental species comprising the elements, and the investigation of elemental isotopic composition. Isotope ratio mass spectrometry is a metrological technique of the highest order, and has been widely used in chemical, biochemical, cosmochemical, environmental, geological, physical, and nuclear research. Mass spectrometry presently plays a key role not only in scientific research, but also in industrial operations. This paper highlights the role that Alfred Otto Carl Nier played in bringing mass spectrometry into the mainstream of science. Nier's career spanned a remarkable period in science, and he made crucial contributions to atomic weights, geochronology, isotope geochemistry, nuclear physics, and space science. He is widely viewed as the 'father of modern mass spectrometry', because of his genius with instrumentation, his innovations, and the generosity with which he shared his ideas and designs. It is timely to remember his fundamental work in mass spectrometry, particularly the development of the sector field mass spectrometer, which is still the instrument of choice for many isotope scientists some 66 years after its first appearance in 1940.

A history of mass spectrometry in Australia.

An interest in mass spectrometry in Australia can be traced back to the 1920s with an early correspondence with Francis Aston who first visited these shores a decade earlier. The region has a rich tradition in both the development of the field and its application, from early measurements of ionization and appearance potentials by Jim Morrison at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) around 1950 to the design and construction of instrumentation including the first use of a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer for tandem mass spectrometry, the first suite of programs to simulate ion optics (SIMION), the development of early TOF/TOF instruments and orthogonal acceleration and the local design and construction of several generations of a sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe (SHRIMP) instrument. Mass spectrometry has been exploited in the study and characterization of the constituents of this nation's unique flora and fauna from Australian apples, honey, tea plant and eucalyptus oil, snake, spider, fish and frog venoms, coal, oil, sediments and shale, environmental studies of groundwater to geochronological dating of limestone and granite, other terrestrial and meteoritic rocks and coral from the Great Barrier Reef. Peter Jeffery's establishment of geochronological dating techniques in Western Australia in the early 1950s led to the establishment of geochronology research both at the Australian National University and at what is now the Curtin Institute of Technology in the 1960s. This article traces the history of mass spectrometry in its many guises and applications in the island continent of Australia. An article such as this can never be complete. It instead focuses on contributions of scientists who played a major role in the early establishment of mass spectrometry in Australia. In general, those who are presently active in the field, and whose histories are incomplete, have been mentioned at best only briefly despite their important contributions to the field.