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Willard F. Libby developed "carbon dating," a method of using carbon-14
for age determination in archaeology, geology, geophysics and other
branches of science. He first proposed his hypothesis in 1947, and
was able to provide experimental proof in short order.
The Nobel presentation speech said of Libby's discovery, "Seldom
has a single discovery in chemistry had such an impact on the thinking
in so many fields of human endeavour."
Libby was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, where
he also worked as an instructor, assistant and then associate professor.
During World War II he worked on the Manhattan District Project;
at the end of the war he joined the faculty of the University of
Chicago. He left academia to become a member of the U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission from 1954 to 1959.
Libby became Professor of Chemistry at UCLA in 1959. In 1962 he
became the founding director of UCLA's Space Physics Center.
Willard Libby was born Dec. 17, 1908 and died in 1980. |
