Willard Frank Libby (17.12.1908-8.09.1980) was an American physical chemist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1950). He was born in Grand Valley. He graduated from the University of California (1931) and worked there until 1941; in 1941—45 he was at Columbia University, in 1945—59 he was professor at the E. Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies (Chicago), from 1959 professor at the University of California (at Los Angeles) and in 1962—76 director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.
His work was in the field of radiochemistry, nuclear chemistry (the chemistry of “hot atoms”, the method of radioactive isotopes as tracers), geophysics, cosmochemistry, high-pressure chemistry, high-vacuum chemistry and plasma chemistry. He contributed to the development of the gaseous diffusion method for enriching the isotope uranium-235. In 1946 he developed the radiocarbon method of geochronology — the determination of the geological age of organic objects by measuring the amount of radiocarbon-14 in them (the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1960). His research also concerned natural tritium and its application in hydrology, geophysics, space physics and chemistry, in particular in the study of planetary atmospheres. In 1953 he proposed a method of determining age by means of the tritium isotope.
A member of a number of academies of sciences and scientific societies. The E. Cresson (1957), J. Gibbs (1958), A. Einstein (1959) and J. Priestley (1959) medals, among others.