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At around the same time that Arthur Holmes published his ideas for the age of the Earth, Harrison Brown, a professor at the University of Chicago, was developing a new method for counting lead isotopes in igneous rocks. Brown thought this method of counting was incredibly tedious but very easy, so he assigned it to Patterson as his dissertation project in Prior to beginning his research, Patterson had worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II, showing that, by the time he began his research, he had much experience in the field.

The main problem with using this method of dating was that Patterson needed ancient rocks that contained crystals bearing both uranium and lead. Additionally, these lead- and uranium-bearing crystals would have had to be as old as the Earth. In order to move past this problem, Patterson looked for answers in rocks beyond the Earth; he turned to meteorites.

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In using meteorites to calculate the age of the Earth, Patterson made two assumptions about rocks that proved to be correct. He assumed, just as Holmes did, that meteorites were leftover materials from the beginning of the solar system and that by being in space, they would maintain an unchanged interior chemistry. Patterson believed, and rightfully so, that if he were to measure the age of one of these meteorites, then he would have an age close to that of the Earth.

Patterson was able to acquire these rare meteorite samples, which contained zircon crystals. These crystals were small and difficult to isolate, but they contained lead and uranium, the materials necessary for Patterson to conduct his research. However, he always found that they were contaminated with atmospheric lead when exposed to air.

This allowed him to make more accurate measurements with clean samples. Patterson had received his Ph. In , Patterson travelled to the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and was given permission to use their state of the art mass spectrometer on his samples. This mass spectrometer was able to detect and measure minute amounts of lead and uranium inside of his zircon crystals.

The mass spectrometer worked by using a magnet to separate out the elements contained in a sample so that the amounts of each could be quantified.