The Godwin Laboratory is a

research Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

facility at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

. It was originally set up to investigate radiocarbon dating and its applications, and was one of the first laboratories to determine a radiocarbon

calibration curve In analytical chemistry, a calibration curve, also known as a standard curve, is a general method for determining the concentration of a substance in an unknown sample by comparing the unknown to a set of standard samples of known concentration. ...

. The lab is named after the English scientist

Harry Godwin Sir Harry Godwin, FRS (9 May 1901 – 12 August 1985) was a prominent English botanist and ecologist of the 20th century. He is considered to be an influential peatland scientist, who coined the phrase "peat archives" in 1981. He had a long ass ...

History

With the late Professor Sir Nicholas Shackleton in charge, the focus of research shifted to marine

isotope Isotopes are two or more types of atoms that have the same atomic number (number of protons in their nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemical element), and that differ in nucleon numbers (mass numb ...

records, which document changes in the size of polar

ice sheet In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than . The only current ice sheets are in Antarctica and Greenland; during the Last Glacial Period at La ...

s and temperature changes. This research helped to establish the Milankovitch Theory as the most plausible explanation of glacial/interglacial changes over the past million years, and was continued to develop much more extensive

geological timescale The geologic time scale, or geological time scale, (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy (the process of relating strata to time) and geochron ...

s, covering the last 30 million years, on the basis of this hypothesis. Other areas researched by members of the laboratory include pollen records and

tree ring Dendrochronology (or tree-ring dating) is the scientific method of dating tree rings (also called growth rings) to the exact year they were formed. As well as dating them, this can give data for dendroclimatology, the study of climate and atmos ...

s as a proxy for past climate. The laboratory changed principal allegiance from the Department of Plant Sciences to the Department of Earth Sciences around 1995. In 2005, after Nick Shackleton's retirement, the laboratory was incorporated into the building housing the Department of Earth Sciences, where it continues to operate. It is part of the inter-departmental Godwin Institute for Quaternary Research, a loose collection of Cambridge University research facilities and workers focused on research particularly addressing the history of the last 1.8 million years.

References

Institutions in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge Geology of the United Kingdom Radiocarbon dating Research institutes in Cambridge {{UCambridge-stub