This award provides 38% of the funds required for the acquisition of a thermal ionization mass spectrometer to be installed and operated in the Department of Geological Sciences at Cornell University. The University is committed to providing the remaining funds needed for the acquisition. The mass spectrometer system will be primarily used in the research programs of the Principal Investigator, several additional faculty members of the Department of Geological Sciences, and their students in research projects supported by the National Science Foundation. These projects employ the radiometric dating and isotopic tracing techniques of isotope geochemistry and include topics such as the evolution of the Archean crust and the mantle, the origin of the Galapagos and Marquesa islands, the isotopic composition of seawater, and the study of magmatism in the Andes.
