Willard F. Libby
| Willard Libby | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Willard Frank Libby December 17, 1908 Grand Valley, Colorado |
| Died | September 8, 1980 (aged 71) Los Angeles, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Radioactivity |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
| Thesis | Radioactivity of ordinary elements, especially samarium and neodymium: method of detection (1933) |
| Doctoral advisor | Wendell Mitchell Latimer |
| Doctoral students |
Maurice Sanford Fox Frank Sherwood Rowland |
| Known for | Radiocarbon dating |
| Notable awards |
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Willard Frank Libby (December 17, 1908 – September 8, 1980) was an American physical chemist noted for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology and palaeontology. For his contributions to the team that developed this process, Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960.
A 1927 chemistry graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, from which he received his doctorate in 1933, he studied radioactive elements and developed sensitive Geiger counters to measure weak natural and artificial radioactivity. During World War II he worked in the Manhattan Project's Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratories at Columbia University, developing the gaseous diffusion process for uranium enrichment.
After the war, Libby accepted professorship at the University of Chicago's Institute for Nuclear Studies, where he developed the technique for dating organic compounds using carbon-14. He also discovered that tritium similarly could be used for dating water, and therefore wine. In 1950, he became a member of the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He was appointed a commissioner in 1954, becoming its sole scientist. He sided with Edward Teller on pursuing a crash program to develop the hydrogen bomb, participated in the Atoms for Peace program, and defended the administration's atmospheric nuclear testing.
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