Early Life
Clair (Pat) Patterson was born in Mitchellville, Iowa and graduated from Grinnell College in chemistry where he met his wife, Lorna (Laurie) McCleary. They both moved to the University of Iowa for graduate work where he did an M.A. in molecular spectroscopy. Both were then sent to work on the Manhattan Project, first at the University of Chicago and then at Oak Ridge, Tennessee where he encountered mass spectrometry.
After the war they returned to Chicago where Laurie took a research job as an infrared spectroscopist to support Pat whilst he did a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under Harrison Brown. After a postdoctoral year at Chicago, Patterson moved with Brown to the Division of Geology (later the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1952 as founding members of its geochemistry program. Pat remained at Caltech for the rest of his life. He and Laurie had four children.
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