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Biographical Sketch
Prof. Gove received his B.Sc. in Engineering Physics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada (1944) and his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1950). He served as Branch Head of Nuclear Physics at Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. Chalk River from 1956 to 1963, before joining the University as a Professor of Physics in 1963. He directed the Nuclear Structure Research Laboratory at the University of Rochester from 1963 to 1988 and was chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1977 to 1980. He became Professor Emeritus of Physics in 1992, and Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Toronto in 1997.
Prof. Gove has had visiting appointments at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark (1961-62), at the Center for Nuclear Research in Strasbourg, France (1971-72) and at Worcester College, Oxford, England (1983-84) where he was the R.T. French Visiting Professor. He has served on numerous visiting and advisory committees in the USA and Canada. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Associated Universities, Inc. from 1978 to 1983. He was the Nuclear Physics Division Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters from 1975 to 1979 and Associate Editor of Annual Reviews of Nuclear and Particle Physics from 1978 to 1994. In 1980 he was the recipient of the JARI (Journal of Applied Radiation and Instrumentation) Award from Pergamon Press, along with A E Litherland and K H Purser, for outstanding contributions to the development of accelerator-based dating techniques.
Prof. Gove is the author of two books, Relic, Icon or Hoax? Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud and From Hiroshima to the Iceman: The Development and Applications of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry and is the author or co-author of some 240 papers on experimental nuclear physics and accelerator mass spectrometry in various scientific journals.
Research
Prof. Gove's research interests are in the general field of Experimental Nuclear Physics. Since 1977 his work has focused on accelerator mass spectrometry. This is a technique that employs tandem electrostatic accelerators to measure ratios of long lived radioisotopes to the stable isotope of elements at extremely low values (10-15 or less). It can be used, for example, to carbon date organic artifacts as old as 60,000 years or more using milligram samples. It has many other multidisciplinary applications. It has been employed to measure the age of the Turin Shroud, the neutron fluence from the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima, the age of the Meteor Crater in Arizona, the age of the initial peopling of North America and many more applications. The accelerator presently employed for this work is located at the University of Toronto. Prior to 1977 Prof. Gove was involved in experimental nuclear physics research also using large electrostatic accelerators.
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