Frank Asaro | |
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![]() Frank Asaro | |
Born | |
Died | June 10, 2014 | (aged 86)
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
Children | 4, including Catherine Asaro |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Nuclear Chemistry |
Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
Doctoral advisor | Isadore Perlman |
Frank Asaro (born Francesco Asaro, July 31, 1927 – June 10, 2014) was an Emeritus Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory associated with the University of California at Berkeley.[1] He is best known as the chemist who discovered the iridium anomaly in the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary layer that led the team of Luis Alvarez, Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel to propose the Asteroid-Impact Theory, which postulates that an asteroid hit the Earth sixty-five million years ago and caused mass extinction during the age of the dinosaurs.[2]