"Van der Merwe was born in Riviersonderend, South Africa, in 1940. He won a scholarship to attend Yale University, where he completed a B.A. in Physics in 1962 and then an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1966. His doctoral thesis was on the development of a method to radiocarbon date steel by measuring the trace amounts of carbon isotopes present in the iron alloy, and he was later the first to radiocarbon date rock art pigments successfully."
"Van der Merwe's greatest contribution to the field, however, was the development of carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis as a dietary and environmental tracer. In 1977, he and the South African radiocarbon scientist John Vogel published a seminal paper in American Antiquity that established the field of isotope-based dietary reconstruction, now a key tool not only in archaeology but also in biology, ecology, forensics, and related fields. Measuring the proportions of the stable carbon isotopes carbon-13 and carbon-12 in archaeological human bone collagen spanning the first"
Nikolaas Johannes van der Merwe was born on August 11, 1940, and died on August 26, 2025. He trained in physics and anthropology at Yale, earning a B.A. in Physics (1962) and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology (1966). His doctoral work developed a method to radiocarbon date steel, and he later became the first to radiocarbon date rock art pigments successfully. He developed carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis as dietary and environmental tracers. His 1977 collaboration with John Vogel established isotope-based dietary reconstruction, reshaping understandings of maize adoption in eastern North America and influencing archaeology, biology, ecology, and forensics.
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