Rate My Professor Keith Fifield

Emeritus Professor Keith Fifield is a physicist at the Australian National University (ANU), holding an emeritus professorship in the Department of Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Applications within the Research School of Physics. He is also affiliated with the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry group and serves as a professor at the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions. Fifield obtained his PhD in Nuclear Physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973. Following this, he held research positions in nuclear physics laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Oxford, and the Australian National University.

In 1986, Fifield initiated the development of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) using ANU’s 14UD Heavy-Ion Accelerator Facility, transitioning to full-time focus on this technique from 1991. As former Director of the Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility, he has led innovations in AMS methodologies and their applications. His research centers on AMS for the ultra-trace detection of long-lived isotopes, encompassing cosmogenic nuclides such as 10Be, 26Al, and 36Cl, and anthropogenic radionuclides including 239Pu, 240Pu, 236U, and 129I. These efforts support studies in erosion rates, groundwater dating, paleoclimate reconstruction, supernova remnants, environmental radioactivity, radiocarbon dating, climate change, landscape evolution, and nuclear discharge tracing. Fifield has authored more than 280 refereed publications in nuclear physics and AMS. Notable works include "Phasing of millennial-scale climate variability in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans" (Science, 2020), "60Fe deposition during the late Pleistocene and the Holocene echoes past supernova activity" (PNAS, 2020), "The age of Wolfe Creek meteorite crater (Kandimalal), Western Australia" (Meteoritics and Planetary Science, 2019), and the book chapter "Accelerator mass spectrometry of long-lived heavy radionuclides" (2008). His contributions have advanced AMS globally through extensive collaborations.