He also discovered that tritium similarly could be used for dating water, and therefore wine. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Gordon Dean appointed Libby to its influential General Advisory Committee (GAC) in 1950. In 1954, he was appointed an AEC commissioner by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the recommendation of Dean's successor, Lewis Strauss. Libby and his family moved from Chicago to Washington, D.C. He brought with him a truckload of scientific equipment, which he used to establish a laboratory at the Carnegie Institution there to continue his studies of amino acids. Staunchly conservative politically, he was one of the few scientists who sided with Edward Teller rather than Robert Oppenheimer during the debate on whether it was wise to pursue a crash program to develop the hydrogen bomb. As a commissioner, Libby played an important role in promoting Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program, and was part of the United States delegation at the Geneva Conferences on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in 1955 and 1958. As the only scientist among the five AEC commissioners, it fell to Libby to defend the Eisenhower administration's stance on atmospheric nuclear testing. He argued that the dangers of radiation from nuclear tests were less than that from chest X-rays, and therefore less important than the risk of having an inadequate nuclear arsenal, but his arguments failed to convince the scientific community or reassure the public. In January 1956, he publicly revealed the existence of Project Sunshine, a series of research studies to ascertain the impact of radioactive fallout on the world's population that he had initiated in 1953 while serving on the GAC. By 1958, even Libby and Teller were supporting limits on atmospheric nuclear testing. Libby resigned from the AEC in 1959, he became Professor of Chemistry at University of California, Los Angeles, a position he held until his retirement in 1976. He taught honors freshman chemistry. In 1962, he became the Director of the University of California statewide Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP), a position he also held until 1976. His time as director encompassed the Apollo space program and the lunar landings. Libby started the first Environmental Engineering program at UCLA in 1972. As a member of the California Air Resources Board, he worked to develop and improve California's air pollution standards. He established a research program to investigate heterogeneous catalysis with the idea of reducing emissions from motor vehicles through more complete fuel combustion. The election of Richard Nixon as president in 1968 generated speculation that Libby might be appointed as Presidential Science Advisor.