Oral histories in meteoritics and planetary science: VIII. Friedrich Begemann

Abstract

In this interview, taped in 2001 during The Meteoritical Society meeting in Rome, Friedrich Begemann recalls that after he earned his doctorate in physics under the direction of Professor Friedrich G. Houtermans, first in Göttingen and then in Bern, Switzerland, he began his career as what he calls a low-level gas counting man, specializing in tritium (3H). In 1954 he accepted an invitation from Professor Willard F. Libby to run his gas-counting laboratory at the University of Chicago. Begemann spent 3 years there during which he traced the distribution in the world's atmosphere and waters of tritium from two sources, natural cosmic radiation and the detonation of the first thermonuclear device. During his time at Chicago he was drawn into Harold C. Urey's group of scientists studying meteorites. Begemann found that he could measure tritium in meteorites, and by coupling his values with those of 3He, he and his collaborators initiated a new branch of meteoritics by determining the first cosmic-ray exposure age of a meteorite--Norton County, which fell in 1947. In 1957, Begemann joined the group led by Friedrich A. Paneth at the Max-Planck-Institute für Chemie at Mainz, Germany, where he continued his studies of gas isotopes for the remainder of his career. His research led to the discovery of primitive noble gases in the diamond-graphite aggregates in ureilites, where their presence in presumably deep-seated igneous rocks still remains to be explained. With the advent of the Apollo missions, Begemann extended his studies to the lunar rocks and soils in an effort to learn as much as possible about the interaction of solids with the space environment. He also became heavily involved in measuring the s-process isotope abundance patterns of medium-heavy chemical elements as they occur in interstellar grains. In 1995 at the meeting in Washington, D.C., The Meteoritical Society presented Friedrich Begemann with the Leonard Medal for his contributions to our understanding of the radiation encountered by bodies as they orbit through space.