World of Scientific Discovery on Stanley Lloyd Miller
Born in Oakland, California, Miller earned a B.A. in Chemistry at University of California. At age 24, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, where he worked under the Nobel prize winner Harold Urey. After earning his doctorate, Miller became a Jewett Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He worked for five years as an instructor and later as an assistant professor in the Biochemistry Department at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. Beginning in 1960 Miller held positions at the University of California in San Diego as an assistant professor, associate professor and professor of Chemistry.
Miller is best known for his work on spontaneous generation, or the formation of life out of non-living matter. In the nineteenth century the theory of spontaneous generation had been proven false after centuries of speculation. People had concluded that life could spontaneously and inexplicably appear after observing such incidents as mushrooms seemingly appearing out of nowhere. But the development of the microscope and more detailed observations by Louis Pasteur laid to rest any possibility of forms of life materializing out of nothing. Rather, it was discovered that microscopic life, such as bacteria and larvae invisible to the naked eye, was the source for the visible life that purportedly had suddenly appeared. Pasteur demonstrated that life would cease to develop spontaneously in completely sterile conditions. He demonstrated that if a room were kept completely sterile, no life would form. Many scientists wondered if Pasteur increased the dimensions of his experiments he would achieve the same results. These scientists particularly wondered if the four year timespan of Pasteur's experiment were increased to a billion years and if the size of his small laboratory were stretched to the size of the universe, the conditions would remain constant.
Miller began research to answer such questions. He attempted to recreate the conditions that could have made first life possible. While at the University of Chicago, Miller performed an experiment that was meant to recreate the conditions of primordial life--the time when only lifeless matter such as gas and rock existed. Earlier, John Burdon Haldane, a British biochemist, had suggested that the Earth's early atmosphere contained no free oxygen. Based on this, Miller surmised that the Earth's environment billions of years ago was similar to conditions found in the environment on the planet Jupiter. Miller's experimental conditions consisted mainly of an atmosphere of hydrogen, with strong admixtures of ammonia, methane, and sterilized water. He then applied an electrical discharge to represent the influence of electricity from lightning storms. Miller then analyzed the water and found under his microscope simple organic compounds and even a few simple amino acids.
The results strongly suggested that amino acids, the components of proteins, could have been synthesized by lightning discharges in the oxygen-poor atmospheric conditions believed to have characterized the Earth in its earliest existence. Since Miller's initial experiments, other researchers have demonstrated that the fundamental building blocks of other kinds of molecules basic to life could be created in a similar way.
Miller introduced an entirely new field of research with his pioneering experiment. Following this experiment, Miller and many other scientists have tried variations on his original research by modifying gas combinations and utilizing other types of energy sources. These subsequent tests have reconfirmed Miller's original results and provided a solid basis for further biochemical research and work on nucleic acids by such scientists as James Watson and Francis Crick. As of this writing, Miller is a professor of Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego.
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