Science: The Philosophers' Stone

The Philosophers' Stone (See Cover)

One day in 1928, at a boarding house near the University of California at Berkeley, a strapping, reddish-haired sophomore named Willard Frank Libby met two graduate students. Their talk about chemical research was so exciting that Libby forgot his yearning to be a mining engineer, and switched to chemistry. Because of that chance meeting, Willard Libby, 46, sat in Geneva's stately Palace of Nations this week as the ranking U.S. scientist and the chief U.S. spokesman at man's first international effort to release the unplumbed benefits of peaceful...

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