Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry

The field of marine chemistry and geochemistry has developed dramatically since the end of World War II. Mainly this spurt of refinement was the consequence of the development of novel techniques of measurement of both radioactive and radiogenic isotopes as well as the light stable isotopes. These new approaches were accompanied by the refinement of elemental analytical techniques for the determination of element concentrations, resulting in large part from the war effort.
The saltiness of the oceans was well known from ancient times and salt was used for domestic uses. But the major composition of sea water was yet to be determined. As early as 1820 William Wollaston, the discoverer of palladium and rhodium, predicted the presence of potassium in sea water and then proceeded to determine its concentration using gravimetric analytical techniques, based on the newly discovered platinum group elements and the formation of potassium-platinum compounds. <...>