Hans E. Suess was an American chemist who developed an improved method of carbon-14 dating and used it to document that the burning of fossil fuels had a profound influence on the Earth’s stocks and flows of carbon (1955). Fossil fuels are so ancient that they contain no carbon-14, so when they are burned, the carbon dioxide they release dilutes the carbon-14 content of both atmosphere and plants. This dilution is now known as the "Suess effect," and it unequivocally proved that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was due to the use of fossil fuels. In a seminal paper in 1957, with Roger Revelle, Suess argued that the world's citizenry was performing "a great geophysical experiment" and called on the scientific community to monitor changes in the carbon dioxide content of waters and the atmosphere, as well as the rates of production of plants and animals. He also used carbon-14 to establish the chronology of the end of the last Ice Age in the northern hemisphere, substantially reducing the traditional estimates. With Harold Urey, he made a fundamental contribution to cosmochemistry with a description of the abundances of the elements based on meteorite data (1956).

Sources

• Cleveland, Cutler (Lead Author); Peter Saundry (Topic Editor). 2008. "Suess, Hans E.." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth February 19, 2007; Last revised May 15, 2008; Retrieved May 22, 2009]. 
• Wikipedia Contributors, Hans Suess, Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, Accessed 22 May 2009.