Background and Career

• Born December 17, 1908 in Grand Valley, Colorado.
• Attended elementary school and high school in Sebastopol California graduating in1926.
• From 1927-1933 studied at the University of California at Berkeley and earned his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry.
• In 1941, at the onset of WWII, Libby worked at Columbia University on the Manhattan District Project until 1945.
• President Eisenhower appointed him as a member of the US atomic energy commission in October 1945.
• Appointed head of the “Atoms for Peace” project and studied the effects of radioactive fallout.
• Libby resigned from this position in 1959 to become a professor of chemistry at University California, Los Angeles.
• Won the Nobel Prize in 1960 for his discovery of carbon dating.
• In 1962 he was appointed as the Director of UCLA’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.

Research

Scientific discoveries of various magnitudes are constantly occuring in myriad fields of study.  It is a rarity, however, to make a breakthrough that not only has an impact on an individual field but also revolutionizes scientific thought across multiple disciplines.  Willard Frank Libby accomplished this feat. Libby first proposed his idea of carbon dating in 1947 and over the next 12 years he researched and perfected the process.  Libby discovered that when plants absorb carbon for photosynthesis they also absorb certain amounts of carbon-14.  He deduced that when the plant dies, it no longer absorbs any of this carbon and that carbon-14 decays at a predictable rate.  Libby found a way to determine the age of plant-based artifacts utilizing the decay rate of carbon-14.  This process has been used to determine the age of mummies, prehistoric artifacts and dwellings.  This dating technique has proven extremely valuable to earth scientists, archeologists, and anthropologists.  In 1960, while at UCLA, his contribution was recognized with the Nobel Prize. He was married to Leonor Hickey. They had twin daughters Janet and Susan. Willard Libby died in 1980

Works by Willard Libby Available at the UCLA Library

• Author/Name: Libby, Willard F. Title:Collected papers Published/distributed: Santa Monica, Ca.: Geo Science Analytical, 1981.

• Author/Name: Libby, Willard F. Title: Radiocarbon dating. Edition: 2d ed. Published/distributed: [Chicago] : University of Chicago Press, 1955.

• Author/Name: Libby, Willard F. Title: Space Science : an after-dinner address / by Willard F. Libby. Published/distributed: Detroit, Mich. : Thomas Alva Edison Foundation, c1970.

• Author/Name: Miller, Maynard M. Title: Tritium in Mt. Everest ice : annual glacier accumulation and climatology at great equatorial altitudes / Maynard M. Miller, Joel S. Leventhal and W. F. Libby. Published/distributed: (Washington, D.C.) : American Geophysical Union, 1965.