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| Name |
Bard, Edouard G. |
| Location
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College de France |
| Primary Field
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Geology |
| Secondary Field
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Geophysics |
 Election Citation
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Bard is recognized for calibration of the geological time scale in the late Pleistocene and Holocene yielding more accurate absolute dates; for innovative use of cosmogenic nuclides and isotope tracers in marine systems; and for providing detailed constraints for global climate change creatively utilizing geological, astronomical, and anthropogenic phenomena. |
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Research Interests
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For his research, Edouard Bard has used techniques of analytical chemistry to determine the extent and the timing of climatic variations. New quantitative methods have enabled him and his team to reconstruct past climates using varied archives such as oceanic sediments, lake sediments, corals, stalagmites and polar ice. His guiding principle has been the wish to study the same climatic phenomena, for example the glaciations, using complementary and often innovative geochemical techniques. In order to go back into the past, he has employed "time machines" - i.e. complex mass spectrometers to measure radioactive isotopes and thus date the climatic variations imprinted in the various archives. Over the last thirty years, the main contributions by Edouard Bard are related to the following topics: diffusion in the ocean of carbon dioxide radiolabelled by thermonuclear radiocarbon measured by accelerator mass spectrometry, paleotemperature fluctuations of the surface ocean by means of isotopic proxies and biomarkers in marine sediments, sea level variations by applying the uranium-thorium mass spectrometry to date ancient coral reefs, past conditions at the ocean-atmosphere interface by using radiocarbon as a paleo-tracer, calibration of the radiocarbon dating method and use of other cosmogenic nuclides such as beryllium 10 to constrain past changes of the solar activity, geomagnetic field and the carbon cycle. |
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