Louis Herman Ahrens

Louis Herman Ahrens (24 April 1918 5 September 1990) was a South African born geochemist, academic, and author. Best known for his work in the 1950s in establishing a method of using rubidium–strontium dating as a means of geochronology.

Early life Louis Ahrens was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in April 1918 and a descendant of Lutheran missionaries to the country. He was the son of F.W. Ahrens, a district magistrate and would travel with his father in South Africa and South-West Africa. He would start his career in Johannesburg in 1940 at the National Institute of Metallurgy (then Government Metallurgical Laboratory) as an analytical chemist with emphasis on optical spectrochemical analysis. This was out of recognition of his work done on analyzing meteorites in the 1950s.

Marriage Ahrens married Evelyn Millicent McCulloch in 1941. They had three children, Yolanda, Wendy and Ian.

Honours Captain Scott Memorial Medal - best honours student, Geological Society of South Africa (c.1939) Third Mineralogical Society of America Award – for contribution to measurements of geological time, Mineralogical Society of America (1953) South African Medal – South African Association for the Advancement of Science (1971) Second President of the International Association of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry (1972–1975)