In 1946, Willard Libby proposed an innovative method for dating organic materials by measuring their content of carbon-14, a newly discovered radioactive isotope of carbon. Known as radiocarbon dating, this method provides objective age estimates for carbon-based objects that originated from living organisms.

When was radiocarbon dating innovated?

1946 Professor Willard Libby, a chemist at the University of Chicago, first proposed the idea of radiocarbon dating in 1946. Three years later, Libby proved his hypothesis correct when he accurately dated a series of objects with already-known ages.