In essence, the Miller-Urey experiment fundamentally established that Earth's primitive atmosphere was capable of producing the building blocks of life from inorganic materials.
The Miller-Urey experiment also remains the subject of scientific debate. Scientists continue to explore the nature and composition of Earth's primitive atmosphere and thus, continue to debate the relative closeness of the conditions of the experimental conditions to Earth's primitive atmosphere.
The Miller-Urey experiment was but one part of a distinguished scientific career for Urey. In 1934, Harold Urey was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery of deuterium, an isotope, or species, of hydrogen in which the atoms weigh twice as much as those in ordinary hydrogen. Also known as heavy hydrogen, deuterium became profoundly important to future studies in many scientific fields, including chemistry, physics, and medicine. Urey continued his research on isotopes over the next three decades, and during World War II his experience with deuterium proved invaluable in efforts to separate isotopes of uranium from each other in the development of the first atomic bombs. Later, Urey's research on isotopes also led to a method for determining the earth's atmospheric temperature at various periods in past history.
This is a free page. This page contains 176 words. This
biography contains 1,511 words (approx. 5 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Harold Urey Access Pass.
