Libby, Willard Frank

Libby, Willard Frank (1908-1980), American chemist and Nobel laureate, who developed the carbon-14 dating method. Libby was born in Grand Valley, Colorado, and educated at the University of California at Berkeley. With the outbreak of World War II he became engaged in research on the atomic bomb project.Libby is best known for having perfected, in 1947, the carbon-14 dating technique, a method of determining the approximate age of prehistoric organic remains. For this work Libby was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. His work also includes the study of the heavy-hydrogen isotope tritium.