death_date death_place work_institution birth_place influences other_names awards image_size nationality fields birth_date spouse residence known_for image article_title name alma_mater
6 january 2012 la jolla , california , usa princeton san diego university university of chicago university of california , metuchen , new jersey willard libby harold c. urey roger revelle jim arnold ernest 1968 -rrb- nasa exceptional scientific achievement medal -lrb- 1970 -rrb- orlando leonard medal , meteoritical society , 1976 lawrence award , chemistry and metallurgy -lrb- arnold in 2006 american cosmochemistry 05 may 1923 louise c. arnold united states cosmochemistry geology of the moon jimarnold.jpg james r. arnold
 james r. arnold ph.d. , princeton university , 1946
james r. arnold

james richard arnold -lrb- may 5 , 1923 -- january 6 , 2012 -rrb- was the harold c. urey professor of chemistry -lrb- emeritus -rrb- , and a noted pioneer in the field of planetary and space chemistry at the university of california at san diego -lrb- ucsd -rrb- , where an endowed lectureship has been established in his name .
arnold received his education at princeton university , where he enrolled as an undergraduate at age 16 .
he earned his doctorate there in 1946 at 23 , for work on the manhattan project -lrb- his thesis is still classified -rrb- .
concerns about nuclear fallout and war prompted him to be an early member of the union of concerned scientists and a world federalist , through which he met his wife louise in 1950 .
as a postdoctoral researcher under willard libby at the university of chicago , arnold helped develop the techniques for carbon-14 dating , working with archeological samples from egypt and other samples with known ages .
for this work , libby was awarded the nobel prize in chemistry in 1960 .
after his postdoc , arnold returned to princeton as a faculty member , working on using cosmic rays to measure the age of rocks. , and where he began his work on extraterrestrial material , including cosmic rays .
it was at princeton that masatake -lrb- masa -rrb- honda and devendra lal first joined his work , an association amongst them that would last the rest of their lives .
in 1957 , roger revelle was working to start ucsd near the campus of scripps institution of oceanography .
he recruited arnold and a few others to be the founding faculty .
the recruitment of harold c. urey convinced arnold to accept and move west in 1958 , leaving princeton to become the founding chair of the ucsd department of chemistry and help found the campus and recruit faculty .
he was a nasa consultant for many years , helping set scientific research priorities , starting just three months after nasa was founded .
he played a major role in establishing and reforming the lunar receiving laboratory for handling lunar samples returned during the apollo program , including being one of the `` four horsemen '' , along with bob walker , paul werner gast , and gerry wasserburg .
arnold performed his own research on lunar rocks and cosmic rays .
under the name shrelldalff -lrb- from the initials of its members -rrb- , his team produced important early papers , and he continued long afterwards with lunar studies , including measurements of the bombardment of the lunar surface by cosmic rays , helping to plot the energy output of the sun over millions of years .
for his work he was awarded the nasa exceptional scientific achievement medal in 1970 .
at the request of then-governor jerry brown , he founded the university of california 's california space institute -lrb- calspace -rrb- in 1979 , and was its first director for ten years , asteroid 2143 , `` jimarnold '' , was named for arnold by its discoverers , e. f. helin and gene shoemaker , in 1980 for his work on computer models of meteorite travel .
arnold was a member of the u.s. national academy of sciences , the american academy of arts and sciences , and a foreign fellow of the indian national science academy .
arnold was also known for wild shirts , a relief from the formal dress required at princeton .
he was married to louise arnold for 60 years , and they had three sons , bob , ted , and ken .
