This book is an educational monograph addressed to graduate students and others undertaking isotope effect research. The fundamental principles needed to understand isotope effects are presented in appropriate detail. While it is true that these principles in the beginning will be more familiar to students of physical chemistry, and some background in physical chemistry is strongly recommended, the text provides enough detail to make the book an asset to students in organic and biochemistry, and geochemistry. Isotope effects are widely employed in many fields of science because of their utility. The underlying scientific principles needed to apply isotope effects to problems in physical chemistry, in organic and biochemistry, and in geochemistry are all the same or similar. This accounts for widespread communication between scientists in very different disciplines who share a fundamental interest in isotope effects. Nowhere has this been better exemplified than at the Gordon Conference on Isotope Effects which has met regularly for more than 50 years and has just as regularly stimulated cooperative efforts. <...>

Some of the major petrologic advances in recent years can be attributed to isotope geochemistry. The first contributions were in the field of absolute age determinations. Not only was the long-debated question of the age of the Earth settled, but absolute dating provided a means of unraveling the chronology of that large fraction (90%) of Earth history that had previously been designated “Precambrian” because of its lack of an adequate paleontological record with which to subdivide it.

Radiogenic and stable isotopes are used widely in the Earth sciences to determine the ages of rocks, meteorites, and archeological objects, and as tracers to understand geological and environmental processes. Isotope methods determine the age of the Earth, help reconstruct the climate of the past, and explain the formation of the chemical elements in the Universe.

“Water, water, every where, — nor any drop to drink” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) aptly sums up the overall picture of the hydrosphere — that part of planet Earth made up of water. The oceans, covering 71% of the surface of the globe, make up 97.25% of the mass of water. Most of the freshwaters, whose volume is estimated to be 39·106 km3, are also not immediately accessible: 29·106 km3 is ice accumulated on mountain glaciers and on the ice caps of the poles; 9.5·106 km3 constitute groundwaters and only about 0.13·106 km3 are surface waters, mainly lakes and rivers. The amount of water held up in the biosphere is estimated to be 0.6·103 km3. The atmospheric moisture amounts to just 13·103 km3 — less than 10−5 of the total amount of water — but this small amount is the one which actuates the hydrologic cycle by virtue of its dynamic nature. <...>