1893-1981
Chemist

Focus on the Problem.

Indiana-born chemist Harold C. Urey first taught high-school classes before entering college at the University of Montana, where he majored in biology. In order to pay for his studies, he worked as a waiter, a construction worker, and eventually as a biology instructor. After graduation he worked as an industrial chemist in Philadelphia during World War I. His dislike of the industrial setting prompted him to pursue a university career. He entered graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1921, earning his doctorate two years later and then traveling to Denmark to study with physicist Niels Bohr. Of his time in California, Urey recalled both the collegiality and the hardworking atmosphere that permeated the small chemistry department, which inspired him to apply himself fully to the field. His early papers, using quantum theory, concerned the way molecules interact...