Harmon Craig

Harmon Craig was an American geochemist, born in 1926 in New York City and died in 2003, regarded as the founder of carbon isotope geochemistry. While a doctoral student under Nobel laureate Harold Urey at the University of Chicago, he characterized the stable isotopic signatures of carbon found in nature and was the first to quantify the atmospheric residence time of carbon dioxide with respect to exchange with the ocean. Recruited to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1955, he extended his isotope methods to the global water cycle and later helped lead the GEOSECS ocean survey program, and in 1998 he became the first geochemist awarded the Balzan Prize.