Willard Libby
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Willard Libby was an American physical chemist who made significant contributions to chemistry through his scientific work. Without additional context about his specific achievements, I cannot provide an accurate overview of why his work matters to a general audience.
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Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1908-12-17
- Died
- 1980-09-08
- Works
- 13
Top works
- Radiocarbon dating
- Radiocarbon dating
- Papers in Geophysics Honoring Louis Byrne Slichter.
- The Frontiers of Knowledge
- Some North and South American radiocarbon dates for archaeological and geological materials
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5 total works indexed
Article
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.
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1908 births1980 deaths20th-century American chemistsAmerican Nobel laureatesAmerican physical chemistsAnaly High School alumniColumbia University facultyColumbia University peopleCorresponding fellows of the British AcademyManhattan Project peopleMembers of the American Philosophical SocietyMembers of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences