The vast majority of geoscience graduates proceed to careers in the extractive minerals industry. This includes the coal and petroleum industries, all of which require an understanding of how, why and when the commodity of interest accumulated. The ‘where’ is the focus of the exploration industry, and every year immense amounts of money are spent globally on locating the next ‘world class’ ore deposit.

In all of these endeavours, naturally occurring isotopes play a pivotal role in deciphering aspects of the resource industry. Specifically, naturally occurring radioactive isotopes can be applied as chronometers to date ‘when’ various aspects of the mineralising process took place, and the complementary stable isotopes offer mechanisms for tracking the sources of metals and reactive ligands necessary to form an economic accumulation of a resource.

Despite this, graduate geologists often have only a limited exposure to isotope geochemistry, and over time this knowledge, if not used regularly, becomes forgotten. This book is aimed to help refresh the memory of those who encounter isotopes in the course of their work – either in the minerals industry or in research fields. It is structured as a reference guide which assumes some understanding of geochemistry; however, it is hoped that it also contains enough depth for the interested reader to comprehend isotopic systems and processes they may not have previously encountered. Hence it is not designed as a conventional textbook, although it could be tackled in a sequential manner for learning, but I anticipate its utility will come for those time-poor individuals who need to ‘dip in’ to a certain section to clarify a concept, gain an understanding or recalculate a data set in order to solve a particular problem.

The world of radiogenic isotope geochemistry is one of often arcane concepts and obscure terminology, so it is also hoped that this will go some way to demystifying aspects of it while maintaining a level of rigour that allows a professional to obtain the maximum value from an (often costly) data set.

Significantly, I have resisted the urge to populate the book with specific case studies and worked examples, and focus instead on general processes. Such a broad base from first principles ultimately allows a broader range of applications and prevents a ‘one size fits all’ approach to using isotopic data.