Willard Frank Libby (1908-1980)

Awarded the Prize “for his method to use carbon-14 for age determination in archaeology, geology, geophysics, other branches of science. ”

American chemist. Libby was born on December 17, 1908 in Gr Valley, Colorado. He was educated at the University of California at Berkeley where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1933 began teaching. In 1941, he moved to Columbia, New York to work on the development of the atom bomb. After World War II he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago before returning to the University of California (1959) as Director of the Institute of Geophysics. Libby died on September 8, 1980 in Los Angeles.