Frank Asaro
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Frank Asaro (born Francesco Asaro, July 31, 1927 – June 10, 2014) was an Emeritus Senior Scientist at the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...
associated with the
University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...
. He is best known as the chemist who discovered the iridium anomaly in the
Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary, formerly known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) boundary, is a geological signature, usually a thin band of rock containing much more iridium than other bands. The K–Pg boundary marks the end o ...
layer that led the team of Luis Alvarez, Walter Alvarez, 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 extinction during the age of the dinosaurs.


Biography

Asaro grew up in
Escondido, California Escondido (Spanish language, Spanish for "Hidden") is a city in San Diego County, California, United States. Located in the North County (San Diego area), North County region, it was incorporated in 1888, and is one of the oldest cities in San ...
, the son of
avocado The avocado, alligator pear or avocado pear (''Persea americana'') is an evergreen tree in the laurel family (Lauraceae). It is native to Americas, the Americas and was first domesticated in Mesoamerica more than 5,000 years ago. It was priz ...
farmer and barber Nicolo Asaro and Antonina (Annie) Asaro. He married Lucille Marie Lavezo and settled in the California Bay Area. They had four children, Frank, Antonina,
Catherine Katherine (), also spelled Catherine and Catherina, other variations, is a feminine given name. The name and its variants are popular in countries where large Christian populations exist, because of its associations with one of the earliest Ch ...
, and Marianna. Asaro's mother, one of the oldest known residents of Escondido, lived until almost 106 years old.


Research


The Early 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 The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
. 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 (NAA) is a nuclear reaction, nuclear process used for determining the concentrations of chemical element, elements in many materials. NAA allows discrete Sampling (statistics), sampling of elements as it disregards the ...
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, known as Cypriot Bichrome ware. Aided by the Swedish archaeologist Einar Gjerstad, they obtained 1,200 pottery sherds from the second millennium excavated by the
Swedish Cyprus Expedition The Swedish Cyprus Expedition was assembled to systematically investigate Cyprus’s early Archaeology, archaeological history. The expedition occurred between September 1927 and March 1931 and was led by the three archaeologists Einar Gjerstad, E ...
in 1927–1931. Among the many results of those studies was the work done with Michal Artzy, a then graduate student at Brandeis. Up until that time, a distinctive type pottery called "Bichrome Ware", first found in Tel Ajjul in
Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...
by the archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie, was believed to originate in Palestine after which it was exported to sites in the eastern
Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...
. 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 (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...
, 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, two statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III that have stood for 3400 years in the Theban necropolis, across the River
Nile The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the List of river sy ...
from the modern city of
Luxor Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt. Luxor had a population of 263,109 in 2020, with an area of approximately and is the capital of the Luxor Governorate. It is among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited c ...
. Collaborating with Professor Robert Heizer 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 as guardians of the Mortuary Temple, the two 50-foot monoliths consist of a quartzose sandstone rock (
quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock that was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tecton ...
) 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 away from the temple site, near
Aswan Aswan (, also ; ) is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate. Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the Aswan Dam on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract. The modern city ha ...
. Asaro's group determined that the original rock used to build the statues actually came from quarries 420 miles away in
Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...
,
Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
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 and reconstructed by Roman emperor
Septimius Severus Lucius Septimius Severus (; ; 11 April 145 – 4 February 211) was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna (present-day Al-Khums, Libya) in the Roman province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through cursus honorum, the ...
about .


The Plate of Brass

The Plate of Brass, also known as Drake's Plate, is an artifact that English explorer
Francis Drake Sir Francis Drake ( 1540 – 28 January 1596) was an English Exploration, explorer and privateer best known for making the Francis Drake's circumnavigation, second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition between 1577 and 1580 (bein ...
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 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 The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...
period in Earth's history. His part in the work began when
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...
–winning physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, asked Asaro to look for iridium in samples of earth from the layer between the Cretaceous and
Paleogene The Paleogene Period ( ; also spelled Palaeogene or Palæogene) is a geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Neogene Period Ma. It is the fir ...
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 of 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 of 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 The Alvarez hypothesis posits that the Extinction event, mass extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and many other living things during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by the Impact event, impact of a large asteroid on the Ea ...
, 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. Asaro himself felt that while mass extinction of many species was well-supported by plentiful fossil records, the smaller number of dinosaur fossils available worldwide made pinpointing cause of their extinction more difficult. In the March 5, 2010, edition of ''
Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...
'', 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.


Legacy

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'' and ''
Stargate ''Stargate'' is a military science fiction media franchise owned by Amazon MGM Studios. It is based on Stargate (film), the film directed by Roland Emmerich, which he co-wrote with producer Dean Devlin; production company StudioCanal owns the ...
'', where storylines involve archeological artifacts imbued with magical, scientific, or mystical powers. Minor planet 4531 Asaro is named in his honor. In 2006, Asaro transferred archives of his work to the University of Missouri Research Reactor Center with the request that they transcribe these data and share them with the scientific community. After more than a decade, a (nearly) comprehensive archive of the work of Asaro, Perlman, and Michel on the geochemistry of archaeological and geological samples was produced by Matthew T. Boulanger. This archive was provided to the scientific community via the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR). The knowledge and experiences gained through working with these records has been used to recommend best practices to modern laboratories producing similar data to ensure that they remain useful into the future.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Asaro, Frank 1927 births 2014 deaths American chemists UC Berkeley College of Chemistry alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty People from Escondido, California