Willard Libby

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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. For his
contributions to the team that developed this process,
Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in

Willard Libby

1960.[1]

Contents
1 Early life
2 Scientific career
3 Honors and awards
4 Personal life
5 Works
6 References
7 Sources
8 External links

Born

Willard Frank Libby

December 17, 1908
Grand Valley, Colorado

Early life

Died

September 8, 1980 (aged 71)

Los Angeles, California

Willard Frank Libby was born in Grand Valley, Colorado,

on 17 December 1908, to Ora Edward Libby and his wife

Residence

United States

Nationality

American

Fields

Radioactivity

Institutions

Columbia University
University of Chicago
University of California, Los
Angeles

Alma mater

University of California, Berkeley

Doctoral
students

Maurice Sanford Fox

Frank Sherwood Rowland

Known for

Radiocarbon dating

Rivers).[2]

Eva May (ne

Libby's father was a farmer; his
mother, a housewife. Before he reached high school age,
Libby's parents moved to the Russian River area of
California, near Sebastopol.[3]
Libby began his education in a two-room Colorado
schoolhouse.[3] After moving to California he attended
grammar and high schools, including Analy High School,
near Sebastopol, between 1913 and 1926 and in 1927,
enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley. He
received his B.S. in 1931 and Ph.D. in 1933 in chemistry
from Berkeley, where he then became a lecturer and later
assistant professor.

Scientific career

Notable awards Elliott Cresson Medal (1957)

Willard Gibbs Award (1958)
Albert Einstein Award (1959)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1960)

Libby was appointed Instructor in the Department of

Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1933 and during the next ten years was promoted
successively to Assistant and then Associate Professor of Chemistry. He spent the 1930s building sensitive

Geiger counters to measure weak natural and artificial radioactivity. In 1941 he joined Berkeley's chapter of
Alpha Chi Sigma. He was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1941 and elected to
work at Princeton University, but on 8 December 1941, this Fellowship was interrupted for war work on
America's entry into World War II, and Libby went to Columbia University on the Manhattan District
Project, on leave from the Department of Chemistry, California University, till 1945.[2] Libby was
responsible for the gaseous diffusion separation and enrichment of the uranium-235 which was used in the
atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
In 1945 he became a professor at the University of Chicago. In 1954, he was appointed to the U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission. In 1959, he became Professor of Chemistry at University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA), a position he held until his retirement in 1976. He taught honors freshman chemistry from 1959 to
1963 (in keeping with a University tradition that senior faculty teach this class). He was Director of the
University of California statewide Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) for many years
including the lunar landing time. He also started the first Environmental Engineering program at UCLA in
1972.
Although Libby retired in 1977, he remained professionally active as a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, until his death
in 1980.[3]

Honors and awards

In 1960, Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for leading the team (namely, post-doc James R.
Arnold and graduate student Ernie Anderson, with a $5,000 grant) that developed carbon-14 dating. He also
discovered that tritium could be used for dating water, and therefore wine.
In 1970 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Chemists.[4]
Analy High School school library has a mural of Libby and a Sebastopol city park and a nearby highway are
named in his honor.

Personal life
Libby was married to the former Leonor Hickey (1912-1992), a Californian; they had twin daughters, Janet
and Susan, born in 1945.
In 1966 he married his second wife Leona Woods Marshall, an original experimenter on the world's first
nuclear reactor and a UCLA professor of environmental engineering.
He died on September 8, 1980, of a blood clot in his lung following a brief hospitalization for pneumonia.[3]
During his time in the New York City area, Libby was a resident of Leonia, New Jersey.[5]

Works
Arnold, J.R. and W. F. Libby. "Radiocarbon from Pile Graphite; Chemical Methods for Its
Concentrations" (http://www.osti.gov/cgi-bin/rd_accomplishments/display_biblio.cgi?
id=ACC0334&numPages=29&fp=N), Argonne National Laboratory, United States Department of
Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (October 10, 1946).

Libby, Willard F., Radiocarbon dating, 2d ed., University of Chicago Press, 1955.
Libby, W. F. "Radioactive Fallout" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC534564/) United
States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (May 29,
1958).
Libby, W. F. "Progress in the Use of Isotopes: The Atomic Triad - Reactors, Radioisotopes and
Radiation" (http://www.osti.gov/cgi-bin/rd_accomplishments/display_biblio.cgi?
id=ACC0335&numPages=26&fp=N), United States Department of Energy (through predecessor
agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (August 4, 1958).
Libby, W. F. "History of Radiocarbon Dating" (http://www.osti.gov/cgibin/rd_accomplishments/display_biblio.cgi?id=ACC0336&numPages=23&fp=N), Department of
Chemistry and Institute of Geophysics, University of California-Los Angeles, International Atomic
Energy Agency, (August 15, 1967).
Libby, W. F. "Vulcanism and Radiocarbon Dates" (http://www.osti.gov/cgibin/rd_accomplishments/display_biblio.cgi?id=ACC0337&numPages=4&fp=N), University of
California-Los Angeles, National Science Foundation, (October 1972).
Libby, W. F. "Radiocarbon Dating, Memories, and Hopes" (http://www.osti.gov/cgibin/rd_accomplishments/display_biblio.cgi?id=ACC0338&numPages=17&fp=N), Department of
Chemistry and Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California-Los Angeles,
National Science Foundation, (October 1972).
He also appeared in the science documentary film Target...Earth? (1980).

References
1. Seaborg, Glenn T. (February 1981). "Obituary: Willard Frank Libby"
(http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v34/i2/p92_s1?bypassSSO=1). Physics Today 34 (2): 9295.
doi:10.1063/1.2914458 (https://dx.doi.org/10.1063%2F1.2914458).
2. "Nobelprize.org" (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1960/libby-bio.html). Retrieved
7 December 2014.
3. Magill, Frank N. (1989). The Nobel Prize Winners, Chemistry 2. Salem Press. pp. 703712. ISBN 0-89356-561-X.
Multi-volume set. Volume ISBN 0-89356-563-6.
4. "Gold Medal Award Winners:" (http://www.theaic.org/award_winners/goldmedal.html#gma20s). AIC. Retrieved
17 January 2015.
5. Well-Read, Well-Shaded and Well-Placed (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?
res=9E01EFDF113CF936A25755C0A961958260), The New York Times, June 15, 1997. Accessed March 30, 2011.
"Much later, its residents included five Nobel Prize winners, among them Enrico Fermi, one of the developers of the
atomic bomb, and Willard Libby, who discovered radiocarbon dating; Sammy Davis Jr., Pat Boone and Alan Alda,
the entertainers, and Robert Ludlum, the author."

Sources
W.F. Libby (1946). "Atmospheric Helium Three and Radiocarbon from Cosmic Radiation"
(http://link.aps.org/abstract/PR/v69/p671/s2). Physical Review 69 (1112): 671672.
doi:10.1103/PhysRev.69.671.2 (https://dx.doi.org/10.1103%2FPhysRev.69.671.2).
W.F.Libby: Radiocarbon dating. Chemistry in Britain, Dec. 1969; 5(12): 548-552.

External links
Picture, Biography and Bibliographic Resources (http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/libby.html),
from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1960
(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1960/libby-bio.html)

Works by or about Willard Libby (http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n82-59227) in libraries

(WorldCat catalog)
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Categories: 1908 births 1980 deaths American physical chemists American Nobel laureates
Columbia University people Guggenheim Fellows Manhattan Project people
Nobel laureates in Chemistry People from Grand Junction, Colorado People from Leonia, New Jersey
Sebastopol, California University of California, Berkeley alumni
University of California, Berkeley faculty University of Chicago faculty
University of California, Los Angeles faculty
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