In it, Jacobson speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in Hadean time, billions of years ago, when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Jacobson put it, "one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive."

Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, he said in a telephone interview from his home in Tarrytown, New York. But today it is winning Jacobson acclaim that he does not want - from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention.

So, after 52 years, he has retracted it. ...