7 Willard Libby 7

covered the body of Jesus Christ but which Libby’s method

applied by others shows to be from a period between 1260

and 1390. In nominating Libby for the Nobel Prize, one

scientist stated, “Seldom has a single discovery in chemistry

had such an impact on the thinking in so many fields of

human endeavour. Seldom has a single discovery generated

such wide public interest.”

Edwin Herbert Land

(b. May 7, 1909, Bridgeport, Conn., U.S.—d. March 1, 1991,

Cambridge, Mass.)

E

dwin Herbert Land was an American inventor and phys-

icist whose one-step process for developing and

printing photographs culminated in a revolution in pho-

tography unparalleled since the advent of roll film.

While a student at Harvard University, Land became

interested in polarized light, i.e., light in which all rays are

aligned in the same plane. He took a leave of absence, and,

after intensive study and experimentation, succeeded

(1932) in aligning submicroscopic crystals of iodoquinine

sulfate and embedding them in a sheet of plastic. The

resulting polarizer, for which he envisioned numerous uses

and which he dubbed Polaroid J sheet, was a tremendous

advance. It allowed the use of almost any size of polarizer

and significantly reduced the cost.

With George Wheelwright III, a Harvard physics

instructor, Land founded the Land-Wheelwright

Laboratories, Boston, in 1932. He developed and, in 1936,

began to use numerous types of Polaroid material in

sunglasses and other optical devices. Polaroid was later

used in camera filters and other optical equipment.

Land founded the Polaroid Corporation, Cambridge,

Mass., in 1937. Four years later he developed a widely