Collected Papers; Volume II, Radiochemistry, Hot Atoms & Physical Chemistry
Santa Monica, CA and Los Angeles, CA: Geo Science Analytical, Inc. and University of California at Los Angeles, 1981. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Trade paperback. Various paginations (400 pages per bibliographic reference). Footnotes. Figures. Tables. References. Ex-Los Alamos National Laboratory library with usual library markings. This collection of W. F. Libby's papers contains those on Radiochemistry, Hot Atoms, namely the chemistry of atoms, ions, radicals, ligands, and chemical entities excited to energies far beyond those commonly tested at ordinary temperatures. This volume also contains important papers about synthetic metals, synthetic catalysts to replace platinum and platinum group metals, and synthetic superconductors, with the promise and possibility of new synthetic superconductors solving the hopes to discover superconductors at temperatures far above that of liquid hydrogen. This includes a two page write-up by W. G. McMillan on Willard Libby and the Manhattan Project and a five page letter from John A. McCone to Mrs. Leona Libby on Dr. Libby's service to the Atomic Energy Commission. Willard Frank Libby (December 17, 1908 – September 8, 1980) was an American physical chemist noted for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology and paleontology. For his contributions to the team that developed this process, Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960. A 1931 chemistry graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, from which he received his doctorate in 1933, he studied radioactive elements and developed sensitive Geiger counters to measure weak natural and artificial radioactivity. During World War II he worked in the Manhattan Project's Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratories at Columbia University, developing the gaseous diffusion process for uranium enrichment. After the war, Libby accepted professorship at the University of Chicago's Institute for Nuclear Studies, where he developed the technique for dating organic compounds using carbon-14. He also discovered that tritium similarly could be used for dating water, and therefore wine. In 1950, he became a member of the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He was appointed a commissioner in 1954, becoming its sole scientist. He sided with Edward Teller on pursuing a crash program to develop the hydrogen bomb, participated in the Atoms for Peace program, and defended the administration's atmospheric nuclear testing. Libby resigned from the AEC in 1959 to become Professor of Chemistry at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a position he held until his retirement in 1976. In 1962, he became the Director of the University of California statewide Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP). Condition: Good.
Keywords: Radiosulfur, Photochemical Processes, Radiation Chemistry, Radiolysys, Radiation Protection, Argon Effect, Ionizing Radiation, Hydrocarbons, Hot Atoms
ISBN: 0941054020
[Book #84111]
Price: $250.00