Elso Barghoorn was born in New York City in 1915. He graduated from Miami University in Ohio and he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1941. Barghoorn was Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University and Curator of the Universities plant fossils collections. (New York Times, CT120 Nov. 91) In 1941 he married his first wife Margaret Alden MaCleod, who he later divorced. He then married Teresa Joan LaCroix, and that soon ended in divorce. He finally married his last wife Dorothy Dellmer Osgood in 1964. She died in 1982.
Elso investigated plant fossils gradually pushing back the estimates of the origin of life to more than 3.4 billion years ago (Website). He looked at fossil evidence from the Archeaneon, starting with uncontroversial fossils from around 2 billion years ago and then using them in the interpretation of possible fossils dating from as far back as 3.4 billion years ago. In the 1950's Dr. Barghoorn discovered fossilized colonies of blue-green algae and aquatic fungi near lake Superior. These algae were 2 billion years old.
By the 1960's he increased science's estimate of the age of the earliest known fossils by another billion years. In 1977 he and his colleagues reported finding South African fossils that were estimated to be 3.4 billion years old. This meant that life originated soon after a suitable environment appeared. (New York Times).
New York Times, CT120 91.Volume 22, Pg. 1273, November
Former link, www.google.com/search?9barghoorn%2c+elso+&btng+google+search, (2001)
Written By: Amber Degner, 2001