Radiocarbon dating
Datación por radiocarbono (carbono-14)
- Date
- 1946-1949 · confidence high
- Place
- University of Chicago, United States
- Credited to
- Willard Libby
- People
- 👤 Willard Frank Libby1908–1980
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
Carbon-14 produced by cosmic rays is incorporated into living things and decays with a half-life of about 5,700 years after death, allowing organic remains up to 50,000 years old to be dated. It revolutionised archaeology and Quaternary geology.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1960.
What it led to
- Absolute chronology in archaeology
- Palaeoclimatology
- Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS)
Built on
- Artificial radioactivity1934
- discovery of carbon-14 (Kamen and Ruben, 1940)
Made possible
- low-background radiation counters
- AMS dating