Robert V. Gentry
| Robert Gentry | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1933 |
| Fields | Nuclear physics |
| Alma mater | University of Florida |
| Known for | Young Earth creationist interpretations of radiohalos |
Robert V. Gentry (born 1933) is a nuclear physicist and young Earth creationist, known for his claims that radiohalos provide evidence for a young age of the Earth. He is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Gentry received a master's degree in physics from the University of Florida, and then worked in the defense industry in nuclear weapons research. In 1959, he was influenced by a verse he read in the Bible while looking at polonium halos, and subsequently converted to Seventh-day Adventism. Thereafter, he entered the doctoral program at Georgia Institute of Technology, but left when he was refused permission to work on the age of the Earth for his dissertation.
By this time he was convinced that radiohalos might be the key to determining the age of the Earth, and might be capable of vindicating flood geology. He continued to work on the subject at home using a small microscope and attempted to publish his results (minus his creationist conclusions) in one or more peer reviewed scientific journals. In 1969, while Gentry was affiliated with an Adventist college in Maryland, Oak Ridge National Laboratory invited him to use their facilities, as a guest scientist in the hope that his work on radiohalos might lead to discovering super-heavy elements. This relationship was terminated as a result of his participation in McLean v. Arkansas.
Gentry has had strong disagreements with other creationists over some details of flood geology. A number of creationists, including fellow Seventh-day Adventists, have criticised his work.
In the late 1970s, Gentry challenged the scientific community to synthesize "a hand-sized specimen of a typical biotite-bearing granite" as a test of his claims. The scientific response was dismissive. A geologist G. Brent Dalrymple stated: "As far as I am concerned, Gentry's challenge is silly. … He has proposed an absurd and inconclusive experiment to test a perfectly ridiculous and unscientific hypothesis that ignores virtually the entire body of geological knowledge."
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