The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1960
Willard F. Libby
Willard Frank Libby was born in
Grand Valley, Colorado, on 17th December, 1908, to Ora Edward
Libby and his wife Eva May (née Rivers).
He attended grammar and high schools near Sebastopol, California,
between 1913 and 1926, moving to the University of
California at Berkeley in 1927, where he studied till 1933,
taking his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in 1931 and 1933 respectively.
He was appointed Instructor in the Department of Chemistry at
California University (Berkeley) in 1933 and during the next ten
years was promoted successively to Assistant and then Associate
Professor of Chemistry. He was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation Fellowship in 1941 and elected to work at Princeton
University, but on 8th 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.
At the end of the war, in 1945, Libby accepted the post of
Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and
Institute for Nuclear Studies (now the Enrico Fermi Institute for
Nuclear Studies) of University of Chicago, remaining there till his
appointment by President Eisenhower on 1st October, 1954, as a
member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
This appointment was renewed by the President for a further
five-year term on 19th June, 1956, but Libby resigned from it on
30th June, 1959, to become Professor of Chemistry in the University of California at
Los Angeles, being appointed Director of the Institute of
Geophysics and Planetary Physics on 1st January, 1962.
Libby has performed a wide range of scientific advisory and
technical consultant work with industrial firms associated with
the Institute for Nuclear Studies, as well as with defence
departments, scientific organizations and universities. From 1945
to 1952 he was a Member of the Committee of Senior Reviewers of
the Atomic Energy Commission; from 1950 to 1954 he was a Member
of the Commission's General Advisory Committee and was
re-appointed to this Committee by President Eisenhower in June,
1960. He has been a Member of the Plowshare Advisory Committee
since 1959; a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in 1941, 1951
and 1959-1962; a Member of the Advisory Board of the Guggenheim
Memorial Founclation, being re-elected in May, 1960, for a
further term of four years; a Research Associate of the Carnegie
Institute of Washington Geophysical Laboratory from 1954 to 1959.
He has served as Consultant to the Office of Civil and Defence
Mobilization (1959-1961) and also as a Member of the Advisory
Council to the Coordinator of Atomic Activities of the State of
California since 1959. He is, since 1963, Director of the Douglas
Aircraft Company, and Member of the National Science Foundation's
General Commission on Science, the Federal Government and the
Academic Institution.
Libby is a Physical Chemist, and specialist in radiochemistry,
particularly hot atom chemistry, tracer techniques, and isotope
tracer work. He became well-known at University of Chicago for his
work on natural carbon-14 (radiocarbon) and its use in dating
archaeological artifacts, and natural tritium, and its use in
hydrology and geophysics.
Besides the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1960, he received other
distinctions, including the Research Corporation Award for 1951
for the radiocarbon dating technique; the Chandler Medal of
Columbia University for outstanding achievement in the field of
chemistry (1954); the American Chemical Society Award for Nuclear
Applications in Chemistry (1956); the Elliott Cresson Medal of
the Franklin Institute (1957); the American Chemical Society's
Willard Gibbs Medal Award (1958); the Albert Einstein Medal Award
(1959); the Day Medal of the Geological Society of America
(1961).
Libby's book, Radiocarbon Dating, was published by the
University of Chicago Press in 1952, and a second edition
appeared in 1955. He is also the author of numerous articles,
which appeared principally in scientific journals. Since 1960 he
is member of the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, and since 1962 member of the
Editorial Board of Science.
Professor Libby holds memberships of numerous learned societies
in the United States; he is also Member of the Heidelberg Academy
of Sciences, of the Bolivian Society of Anthropology, and is
Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
(1960).
He is married to the former Leonor Hickey of King City,
California. They have twin daughters Janet and Susan (b.
1945).
From Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1942-1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Willard F. Libby died on September 8, 1980.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1960
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