1960's Nobelmen
Amid all the hullabaloo about who's ahead in scientific achievement, the Swedish Academy of Science, which awards Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physics, has remained notably indifferent to political leanings. It was not pro-Western sympathy but professional admiration that last week made a pair of U.S. scientists the 1960 Nobel prizewinners in chemistry and physics. The two:
Willard Frank Libby, 51, in chemistry. A lanky (6 ft. 2 in., 200 Ibs.), slow-spoken member of the Atomic Energy Commission between 1954 and 1959, Libby is the man who pioneered in carbon 14, by means of which bones, beams and bogs can be dated as far back as 60,000 years ago (TIME cover, Aug. 15, 1955).
Born in Colorado and raised on a fruit ranch in Northern California, Libby studied chemistry at the University of California in Berkeley. He got his doctorate in 1933, went on to teach chemistry at Berkeley. But after Pearl Harbor, he plunged into the supersecret Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb.
After the war, Libby joined the newly formed Institute of Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago and specialized in peaceful employment of the atom. Investigating the feeble radioactivity of air, he found that a good part of it comes from carbon 14, a radioactive isotope of carbon that is formed when cosmic rays hit nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere. This led to a brilliant idea that has revolutionized a long list of sciences.
Carbon 14 has a half life of 5,700 years, i.e., half its atoms disintegrate in that time, giving off radiation. Living plants absorb C14 from the air, and animals get it from plants. Therefore, newly formed organic matter starts out with a standard amount of carbon 14, but after the plant or animal dies, the C14 in its tissues slowly diminishes. When the amount remaining is measured by means of its radiation, the time that has passed since death can be calculated accurately.
This dating system, which Libby checked on ancient objects of known age, such as human hair from Egyptian tombs, has been fabulously successful. It is now used to date objects as diverse as charcoal from neolithic campfires, and trees killed by Ice Age glaciers. It won Libby his well-deserved Nobel Prize.
Libby's laboratory career was interrupted by his service on the Atomic Energy Commission. Although he sturdily rebutted some of the less knowledgeable, most hair-raising claims about the horrors of atomic fallout, Libby did not enjoy his AEC job. He never saw an atomic explosion, and may never see one. Moreover, as he said last week of his AEC experience, "There was constant strain and tension there."
In 1959, Libby resigned his commissionership with a near audible sigh of relief and became a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles. He lives close to the campus with his wife and 15-year-old twin daughters, and is busy again on peaceful research.
Donald Glaser, 34, a beamingly boyish professor at the University of California, Berkeley, won the physics prize. Dr. Glaser was born in Cleveland. While in high school (he graduated at 15), he took as much interest in music as in science, and at 16 played the violin in Cleveland's Philharmonic Orchestra. When he entered Case Institute of Technology, physics finally won precedence over music.