Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1966)
Priestley Medal (1973)
V. M. Goldschmidt Award (1975)
Scientific career
Fields
Physical chemistry
Institutions
University of Copenhagen
Johns Hopkins University
Columbia University
Institute for Nuclear Studies
University of Chicago
University of California, San Diego
Doctoral advisor
Gilbert N. Lewis
Doctoral students
Stanley Miller
Harmon Craig
Mildred Cohn
Gerald Wasserburg
Signature
Harold Clayton UreyForMemRS (/ˈjʊəri/YOOR-ee; April 29, 1893 – January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in the development of the atom bomb, as well as contributing to theories on the development of organic life from non-living matter.[1]
Born in Walkerton, Indiana, Urey studied thermodynamics under Gilbert N. Lewis at the University of California, Berkeley. After he received his PhD in 1923, he was awarded a fellowship by the American-Scandinavian Foundation to study at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. He was a research associate at Johns Hopkins University before becoming an associate professor of chemistry at Columbia University. In 1931, he began work with the separation of isotopes that resulted in the discovery of deuterium.
During World War II, Urey turned his knowledge of isotope separation to the problem of uranium enrichment. He headed the group located at Columbia University that developed isotope separation using gaseous diffusion. The method was successfully developed, becoming the sole method used in the early post-war period. After the war, Urey became professor of chemistry at the Institute for Nuclear Studies, and later Ryerson professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago.
Urey speculated that the early terrestrial atmosphere was composed of ammonia, methane, and hydrogen. One of his Chicago graduate students was Stanley L. Miller, who showed in the Miller–Urey experiment that, if such a mixture were exposed to electric sparks and water, it can interact to produce amino acids, commonly considered the building blocks of life. Work with isotopes of oxygen led to pioneering the new field of paleoclimatic research. In 1958, he accepted a post as a professor at large at the new University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he helped create the science faculty. He was one of the founding members of UCSD's school of chemistry, which was created in 1960. He became increasingly interested in space science, and when Apollo 11 returned Moon rock samples from the Moon, Urey examined them at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. Lunar astronaut Harrison Schmitt said that Urey approached him as a volunteer for a one-way mission to the Moon, stating "I will go, and I don't care if I don't come back."[2]
^Miller, S. L.; Oró, J. (1981). "Harold C. Urey 1893–1981". Journal of Molecular Evolution. 17 (5): 263–264. Bibcode:1981JMolE..17..263M. doi:10.1007/BF01795747. PMID 7024560. S2CID 10807049.
^Harrison "Jack" Schmitt – 1903–1969 Wrights to Armstrong (YouTube video posted February 29, 2016, by the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition)
Harold Clayton Urey ForMemRS (/ˈjʊəri/ YOOR-ee; April 29, 1893 – January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned...
meaning "second". Deuterium was discovered by American chemist HaroldUrey in 1931. Urey and others produced samples of heavy water in which the deuterium...
lynching..." Others, including non-Communists such as Jean Cocteau and HaroldUrey, a Nobel Prize-winning physical chemist, as well as left-leaning figures...
politician Daniel Salamanca Urey (1869–1935), president of Bolivia HaroldUrey (1893-1981), American physical chemist Urey Fedorovich Lisianski (1773–1837)...
there were two lines of investigation into nuclear reactor technology: HaroldUrey researched heavy water at Columbia, while Arthur Compton organized the...
from ancient times with the philosophy of Aristotle through to the Miller-Urey experiment in 1952. Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout...
Goldwater Scholars, and 40 Udall Scholars to its name. One alumnus, HaroldUrey, has won the Nobel Prize. An act of Congress of February 18, 1881, dedicated...
critics, HaroldUrey, felt that Sagan was getting too much publicity for a scientist and was treating some scientific theories too casually. Urey and Sagan...
came in 1953. A graduate student, Stanley Miller, and his professor, HaroldUrey, performed an experiment that demonstrated how organic molecules could...
and his Ph.D. in 1935 at Columbia University under the supervision of HaroldUrey. Rittenberg's doctoral work concerned thermodynamic properties of molecules...
songwriter (b. 1914) January 5 Guy Paquinet, French jazz trombonist HaroldUrey, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1893) Lanza del Vasto, Italian...
and the evolution from molecules to cells. In 1952, Stanley Miller and HaroldUrey carried out a chemical experiment to demonstrate how organic molecules...
seminars, he attended a chemistry seminar in which the Nobel laureate HaroldUrey gave a lecture on the origin of solar system and how organic synthesis...
scientist and Nobel laureate HaroldUrey discovered the isotope deuterium in 1931 and was later able to concentrate it in water. Urey's mentor Gilbert Newton...
1953–1955: Clyde A. Hutchison Jr. 1942–1952: Joseph E. Mayer 1933–1941: HaroldUrey According to the Web of Science database, as to 15 March 2018, a total...
by Oparin's theory, University of Chicago chemists Stanley Miller and HaroldUrey applied an electric discharge analogous to a lightning strike to a seawater-like...
he had little administrative experience; Bush, Conant, Lawrence and HaroldUrey all expressed reservations about this. Moreover, unlike his other project...
gas for weather balloons. Deuterium was discovered in December 1931 by HaroldUrey, and tritium was prepared in 1934 by Ernest Rutherford, Mark Oliphant...
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