The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Libby, Willard Frank
1908–80, American chemist, b. Grand Valley, Colo., grad. Univ. of California (B.S., 1931; Ph.D., 1933). He taught (1933–45) at the Univ. of California and was a chemist (1941–45) in the war research division at Columbia. From 1945 to 1954 he was with the Univ. of Chicago and was a member of the committee of reviewers for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); he was then (1954–59) an AEC commissioner. In 1959 he joined the faculty of the Univ. of California at Los Angeles. Libby was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development (c.1946) of radioactive carbon-14 dating. He was the recipient of several other prizes, including the 1959 Albert Einstein award. Libby wrote Radiocarbon Dating (1955).
