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Christopher Bronk Ramsey is a British physicist, mathematician and specialist in
radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was de ...
. He is a professor at the
University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...
and is the incumbent Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU), a post he has held since 2003. He is a member of
Merton College, Oxford Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, ...
and a Bodley Fellow. His doctorate, completed in 1987, included the first successful implementation of carbon dioxide gas as a target for radiocarbon dating via
accelerator mass spectrometry Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a form of mass spectrometry that accelerates ions to extraordinarily high kinetic energies before mass analysis. The special strength of AMS among the mass spectrometric methods is its power to separate a r ...
. In the early 1990s, Bronk Ramsey became interested in the application of
Bayesian statistics Bayesian statistics is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability where probability expresses a ''degree of belief'' in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about the event, ...
to the analysis of radiocarbon data. In 1994, he authored OxCal, an online radiocarbon calibration program. Bronk Ramsey has made significant contributions to various chronological issues, including the
Minoan eruption The Minoan eruption was a catastrophic volcanic eruption that devastated the Aegean island of Thera (also called Santorini) circa 1600 BCE. It destroyed the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri, as well as communities and agricultural areas on nea ...
of Thera, the British Neolithic, the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa and the
Egyptian chronology The majority of Egyptologists agree on the outline and many details of the chronology of Ancient Egypt. This scholarly consensus is the so-called Conventional Egyptian chronology, which places the beginning of the Old Kingdom in the 27th centu ...
. His research interests also include the improvement of the radiocarbon calibration record. He is a member of the International Calibration (IntCal) group. His recent work has focused on improving the radiocarbon calibration record and synthesizing radiocarbon data with other chronometric information. In October 2012, Bronk Ramsey published the first wholly terrestrial radiocarbon calibration record extending back to the limit of the technique.


Selected publications

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References


External links


Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit



Research Laboratory for Archaeology & the History of Art
{{authority control Fellows of Merton College, Oxford British physicists