Frank Asaro
Encyclopedia
Frank Asaro is an Emeritus Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...

 associated with the University of California at Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

. He is best known as the chemist who discovered the iridium anomaly
Iridium anomaly
The term iridium anomaly commonly refers to an unusual abundance of the chemical element iridium in a layer of rock strata, often taken as evidence of an extraterrestrial impact event because of the case of such an anomaly at the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary...

 in the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary
K–T boundary
The K–T boundary is a geological signature, usually a thin band, dated to 65.5 ± 0.3 Ma ago. K is the traditional abbreviation for the Cretaceous period, and T is the abbreviation for the Tertiary period...

 layer that led the team of Luis Alvarez
Luis Alvarez
Luis W. Alvarez was an American experimental physicist and inventor, who spent nearly all of his long professional career on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley...

, Walter Alvarez
Walter Alvarez
Walter Alvarez is a professor in the Earth and Planetary Science department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most widely known for the theory that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact, developed in collaboration with his father, Nobel Prize winning physicist Luis...

, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel to propose the Asteroid-Impact Theory, which postulates that an asteroid hit the Earth sixty-five million years ago and caused mass extinctions, including the demise of the dinosaurs.

The Berkeley Years

Asaro went to college at age sixteen during World War II and earned both his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

. For his doctorate, he worked with Professor Isadore Perlman on alpha decay processes in nuclear chemistry. Asaro and Perlman collaborated over the next fourteen years on studies of nuclear structure. It was during this time that they developed a high-precision technique of neutron activation analysis
Neutron activation analysis
In chemistry, neutron activation analysis is a nuclear process used for determining the concentrations of elements in a vast amount of materials. NAA allows discrete sampling of elements as it disregards the chemical form of a sample, and focuses solely on its nucleus. The method is based on...

 that has become a standard for determining the origin of ancient artifacts, in particular pottery. Asaro initially agreed to work on the project for a few months. He writes, "How good was Perlman at choosing new fields? I thought I would take three months off to do this. I made that decision in 1967, and I'm still doing this work 32 years later.

One of the first projects Asaro tackled with Perlman was a study of ancient pottery from Cyprus. Aided by the Swedish archaeologist Einar Gjerstad
Einar Gjerstad
Einar Gjerstad was a Swedish archaeologist of the ancient Mediterranean, particularly known for his work on Cyprus, as well as his studies of early Rome....

, they obtained 1,200 pottery sherds from the second millennium B.C. excavated by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition
Swedish Cyprus Expedition
The Swedish Cyprus Expedition was a project to systematically investigate the archaeology of the entire early history of Cyprus. It took place between September 1927 and March 1931 and was led by three archaeologists: Einar Gjerstad, Erik Sjöqvist and Alfred Westholm together with architect John...

 in 1927-31. Among the many results of those studies was the work done with Michal Artzy, a then graduate student at Brandeis
Brandeis
Brandeis may refer to:* Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice* Things named for Louis Brandeis:** Brandeis Brief, a 1908 document written by Brandeis as a litigator** Brandeis University, in Massachusetts, USA...

. Up until that time, a distinctive type pottery called "Bichrome Ware," first found in Tel Ajjul in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

 by the archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie, was believed to originate in Palestine after which it was exported to sites in the eastern Mediterranean. Thrown on a fast wheel and painted with animals and birds, the unusual pottery appeared to be the work of a new painter or school of painting. The Berkeley group showed that in fact the chemical composition of the pieces matched that of pottery made in Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

, which meant it had later been exported to Palestine and other sites, a result that had extensive ramifications on the archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean.

The Colossi of Memnon

In 1973, Asaro and his colleagues embarked on a study of the Colossi of Memnon
Colossi of Memnon
The Colossi of Memnon are two massive stone statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. For the past 3400 years they have stood in the Theban necropolis, across the River Nile from the modern city of Luxor.-Description:The twin statues depict Amenhotep III The Colossi of Memnon (known to locals as...

, two statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III that have stood for 3400 years in the Theban necropolis, across the River Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...

 from the modern city of Luxor
Luxor
Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt and the capital of Luxor Governorate. The population numbers 487,896 , with an area of approximately . As the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open air museum", as the ruins of the temple...

. Collaborating with Professor Robert Heizer
Robert Heizer
Robert Fleming Heizer was an archaeologist who conducted extensive fieldwork and reporting in California, the southwest, and the Great Basin- Background :...

 and his research group in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeological Research at the University of California, Berkeley, the Asaro group analyzed the stone used to construct the statues. Erected in the early fourteenth century B.C. as guardians of the Mortuary Temple
Mortuary temple
Mortuary temples were temples constructed adjacent to, or in the vicinity of, royal tombs in the Ancient Egypt. The temples were designed to commemorate the reign of the pharaoh by whom they were built, as well as for use by the pharaoh's cult after death.-History:Mortuary temples were built...

, the two 50-foot monoliths consist of a quartzose sandstone rock (quartzite
Quartzite
Quartzite is a hard metamorphic rock which was originally sandstone. Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts. Pure quartzite is usually white to gray, though quartzites often occur in various shades of pink...

) formed by quartz particles cemented with iron oxide. Archeologists had once believed that all the stone used to create the statues came from a quarry about 100 miles away from the temple site, near Aswan
Aswan
Aswan , formerly spelled Assuan, is a city in the south of Egypt, the capital of the Aswan Governorate.It stands on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract and is a busy market and tourist centre...

. Asaro's group determined that the original rock used to build the statues actually came from quarries 420 miles away in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 and was transported overland to the final site, a remarkable feat of engineering for that time. Using neutron activation analysis, Asaro and his co-workers showed that the stone from Aswan was only used to repair the upper half of the northern statue, which had been knocked over in an earthquake about 27 B.C. and reconstructed by Roman emperor Septimius Severus
Septimius Severus
Septimius Severus , also known as Severus, was Roman Emperor from 193 to 211. Severus was born in Leptis Magna in the province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through the customary succession of offices under the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Severus seized power after the death of...

 about 197 A.D.

The Plate of Brass

The Plate of Brass, also known as Drake's Plate
Drake's Plate of Brass
The so-called Drake's Plate of Brass is a forgery that purports to be the brass plaque that Francis Drake posted upon landing in Northern California in 1579. The hoax was successful for forty years, despite early doubts. After the plate came to public attention in 1936, historians immediately...

, is an artifact that English explorer Sir Francis Drake purportedly left on the coast of what is now Marin County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, after his ship the Golden Hinde landed there in 1579. However, in 1977, Asaro and his colleague Helen Michel used neutron activation analysis to determine that the zinc content in the composition of the plate was too high and the impurity levels too low to come from techniques of sixteenth century English for working with brass. Instead, the plate was mostly likely manufactured in the first half of the nineteenth century or later.

The Asteroid Impact Theory

Asaro is best known as the nuclear chemist who discovered the iridium anomaly
Iridium anomaly
The term iridium anomaly commonly refers to an unusual abundance of the chemical element iridium in a layer of rock strata, often taken as evidence of an extraterrestrial impact event because of the case of such an anomaly at the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary...

 that led to the development of the asteroid impact theory to explain the mass extinctions, including the demise of the dinosaurs, that occurred at the end of the geological era known as the Cretaceous
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous , derived from the Latin "creta" , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide , is a geologic period and system from circa to million years ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the...

 period in Earth's history. His part in the work began when Nobel-Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 winning astrophysicist Luis Alvarez
Luis Alvarez
Luis W. Alvarez was an American experimental physicist and inventor, who spent nearly all of his long professional career on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley...

 and his son, geologist Walter Alvarez
Walter Alvarez
Walter Alvarez is a professor in the Earth and Planetary Science department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most widely known for the theory that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact, developed in collaboration with his father, Nobel Prize winning physicist Luis...

, asked Asaro to look for iridium in samples of earth from the layer between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. Their purpose was to discover if the composition of the boundary layer that represented the transition between those two periods could provide insight into how many years the layer represented.

Asaro told the Alvarezes that the amount or iridium present in such samples of the Earth would almost certainly be too small to detect. However, he was interested in the project and agreed to perform the analysis, working with colleague Helen Michel. When they discovered remarkably high levels of iridium, he believed they had done the analysis incorrectly. He and Michel repeated the tests many times before bringing their results to Alvarez. Walter Alvarez has written, "Frank hunts down potential mistakes with the ruthlessness of a counterspy, triple checks everything, and then checks it again .... We know today what killed the dinosaurs because Frank Asaro's ability to make these remarkable measurements." The results were soon confirmed, not only for the samples provided by Alvarez, but independently by other groups around the world. That discovery resulted in the group, led by Luis Alvarez, to propose that an asteroid collided with the Earth and caused the mass extinctions. Although the theory is sometimes referred to as the Alvarez hypothesis
Alvarez hypothesis
The Alvarez hypothesis claims that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and many other living things was caused by the impact of a large asteroid on the Earth sixty-five million years ago, called the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. Evidence indicates that the asteroid fell in the Yucatán...

, the seminal paper published in the literature was authored by Luis Alvarez, his son Walter, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel.

The theory was initially met with skepticism, but over the years has become accepted as the primary explanation of the mass extinctions that took place sixty-five million years ago. In the March 5, 2010 edition of Science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

, an international panel of experts in geology, paleontology and related fields published the results of their exhaustive review of the data, ruling in favor of the asteroid theory.

Biography

Asaro grew up in Escondido, California, the son of avocado
Avocado
The avocado is a tree native to Central Mexico, classified in the flowering plant family Lauraceae along with cinnamon, camphor and bay laurel...

 farmer and barber Nicolo Asaro and Annie Asaro. He married Lucille Marie Lavezo and settled in the California Bay Area. They have four children, Frank, Antonina, Catherine
Catherine Asaro
Catherine Asaro is an American science fiction and fantasy author. She is best known for her books about the Ruby Dynasty, called the Saga of the Skolian Empire.- Biography :...

, and Marianna. Asaro continues to work on neutron activation analysis as an emeritus senior scientist at the Larwence Berkeley Lab
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...

. Asaro's mother is still living, one of the longest-lived residents of Escondido. Work by Asaro and other scientists who study archeological artifacts has become trendy in recent years with the popularity of science fiction shows such as Warehouse 13
Warehouse 13
Warehouse 13 is an American fantasy television series that premiered on July 7, 2009 on the Syfy network.Executive-produced by Jack Kenny and David Simkins, the dramatic comedy from Universal Media Studios has been described as borrowing much from 1980s television series Friday the 13th: The...

 and Stargate
Stargate
Stargate is a adventure military science fiction franchise, initially conceived by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. The first film in the franchise was simply titled Stargate. It was originally released on October 28, 1994, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Carolco, and became a hit, grossing nearly...

, where storylines involve archeological artifacts imbued with magical, scientific, or mystical powers.
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