Willard Libby

Willard Libby
Born	Willard Frank Libby (1908-12-17)December 17, 1908 Parachute, Colorado, U.S.
Died	September 8, 1980(1980-09-08) (aged 71) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Education	University of California, Berkeley (BS, PhD)
Known for	Radiocarbon dating
Spouses	Leonor Hickey ​ ​ (m. 1940; div. 1966)​ Leona Woods Marshall ​ ​ (m. 1966)​
Children	2
Awards	Elliott Cresson Medal (1957) Willard Gibbs Award (1958) Joseph Priestley Award (1959) Albert Einstein Award (1959) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1960) Arthur L. Day Medal (1961)
Scientific career
Fields	Radioactivity
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley SAM Laboratories Columbia University University of Chicago University of California, Los Angeles
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

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 1931 chemistry graduate of the University of California, 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 a 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.

Libby resigned from the AEC in 1959 to become professor of chemistry at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a position he held until his retirement in 1976. In 1962, he became the director of the University of California statewide Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP). He started the first Environmental Engineering program at UCLA in 1972, and as a member of the California Air Resources Board, he worked to develop and improve California's air pollution standards.