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Letter to the Editor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

H. E. Gove
H. E. Gove*
Affiliation:
The University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627 USA
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Abstract

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Dear Editor,

Professor R. E. Taylor, in his review for R adiocarbon of my book Relic, Icon or Hoax? Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud (Taylor 1997) noted that I had incorrectly used the word “invent” and its derivatives in connection with the origins of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). A more accurate description of the development of AMS is to be found in the papers that I co-authored (Gove, Litherland and Purser 1987) and authored (Gove 1992) prior to publication of my book. Who actually “invented” AMS is not clear. Certainly, strong contenders are L. W. Alvarez and R. Cornog (Alvarez and Cornog 1939) and K. H. Purser (Purser 1977). The contributions made by Purser, A. E. Litherland and me to the development of AMS were recognized by Pergamon Press in 1980 when the Board of Editors of the International Journal of Applied Radiation and Isotopes (JARI) voted to give us the first JARI award. I should note that neither of my two colleagues with whom I was involved in the development of AMS, Professor Litherland nor Dr. Purser, saw a copy of my book before publication. If they had, this unintended contretemps would not have occurred.

Yours sincerely,

Type
Letter
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , 1997 , pp. 221
Copyright
Copyright © The American Journal of Science 

References

Alvarez, L. W. and Cornog, R. 1939 He3 in Helium. Physical Review 56: 379.Google Scholar
Gove, H. E. 1992 The history of AMS, its advantages over decay counting: Applications and prospects. In Taylor, R. E., Long, A. and Kra, R. S., eds., Radiocarbon after Four Decades: An Interdisciplinary Perspective . New York, Springer-Verlag: 214–229.Google Scholar
Gove, H. E., Litherland, A. E. and Purser, K. H. 1987 Anno Decimo session. In Gove, H. E., Litherland, A. E. and Elmore, D., eds., Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B29: 437–438.Google Scholar
Purser, K. H. 1997 U.S. Patent 4,037,100.Google Scholar
Taylor, R. E. 1997 Review of Relic, Icon or Hoax? Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud, by H. E. Gove. Radiocarbon 39(1): 115–117.Google Scholar