Ten fun facts about Willard Libby
Fact 1
Willard Libby was born on December 17, 1908 at Grand Valley, Colorado.
Fact 2
He graduated at the University of California at Berkeley and earned his doctorate in 1933.
Fact 3
Willard Libby moved to the Enrico Fermi Institute of Nuclear Studies, Chicago in 1945 and began an extensive study of radiocarbon.
Fact 4
From 1945 until 1965 he was research associate in the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institute and simultaneously served on the U.S Atomic Energy Commission.
Fact 5
Willard Libby helped develop a method for separating uranium isotopes and showed that tritium is a product of cosmic radiation.
Fact 6
Together with his students, in 1947 Libby developed carbon-14 dating, which proved to be an extremely valuable tool for archaeology, anthropology and earth science.
Fact 7
In 1959 Libby became a Member of the Advisory Council to the Coordinator of Atomic Activities of the State of California in the same year.
Fact 8
He was Member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, of the Bolivian Society of Anthropology and Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1960).
Fact 9
Since 1960 Libby was a member of the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and since 1962 member of the Editorial Board of Science.
Fact 10
Willard Libby died in Los Angeles on September 8, 1980.
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