Hessel de Vries (November 15, 1916 in Annen – December 23, 1959 in Groningen), was a Dutch physicist and professor at the

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; nl, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, abbreviated as RUG) is a public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. Founded in 1614, the university is th ...

who furthered the detection methods and applications of radiocarbon dating to a variety of sciences. The Nobel prize was awarded for in this field in 1960, however de Vries was not a contender, since the prize is not awarded posthumously and Hessel de Vries died in 1959 by committing suicide after murdering an analyst, Anneke Hoogeveen. He has been called "the unsung hero of radiocarbon dating" by Eric Willis, the first director of the radiocarbon-dating laboratory 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 ...

. The 1960

Nobel Prize in Chemistry ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...

was awarded to

Willard Libby Willard Frank Libby (December 17, 1908 – September 8, 1980) was an American physical chemist noted for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology and palaeontology. For his contribution ...

for his radiocarbon-dating method. His other major area of research included studies of human color vision and hearing. De Vries became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1956.

De Vries effect

In 1958, de Vries showed that baffling anomalies in the carbon-14 dates, observed by Willard Frank Libby for Egyptological samples, were in fact systematic anomalies on a global scale, represented in the carbon-14 dates of

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. This phenomenon has been called the "de Vries effect". The correspondence with tree rings, which can be counted (one ring for each year), led to a recalibration of radiocarbon dating that was a large improvement in the accuracy.

Murder and suicide

De Vries committed suicide in 1959, after murdering a former analyst (Anneke Hoogeveen), with whom he was in love but who had become engaged to another man.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vries, Hessel de 1916 births 1959 suicides People from Aa en Hunze 20th-century Dutch physicists University of Groningen faculty Murder in the Netherlands Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences 1959 murders in the Netherlands