Libby, Willard Frank
Willard Frank Libby (1908 - 1980), an American chemist who won the 1960 Nobel Prize for the discovery of radiocarbon dating, a process that revolutionized archaeology and several other branches of science. Carbon-14 (14C) is an unstable radioactive isotope that decays at a measurable rate upon the death of an organism. Libby was able to determine the age of organic artifacts by measuring the amount of remaining 14C. He tested his process on objects of known age, such as timbers from Egyptian tombs. The tests proved reliable, and it was assumed that this technique was accurate for objects up to 50,000 years old. It was later realized that this technique was actually accurate for objects up to 70,000 years of age. During World War II, Libby worked on the Manhattan Project at Columbia University with Nobel laureate Harold Urey. Libby was responsible for the gaseous diffusion separation and enrichment of Uranium-235 that was used in the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima, Japan during World War II.