From Hiroshima to the Iceman

How much difference can a new technique make to the understanding of the world? This is an account of a breakthrough in science and the insights it has brought that would not have been possible without it. Harry Gove has been involved with accelerator mass spectrometry, and here tells the story of its development and use as an ultrasensitive detection technique in many fields of science and the arts. A key advantage of the technique is that it requires only very small samples of material. Areas where the technique has increased understanding and provided solutions to problems include the clean-up and storage of nuclear waste, the effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, biomedical research, and the first peopling of the Americas. It has also allowed the carbon dating of many precious artefacts, thereby solving some contemporary mysteries. Objects dated include the Turin Shroud, the Iceman, the elephant bird egg and the Dead Sea Scrolls.