Chemistry Labs

Photo credit: U.S. Department of Energy (ENERGY.GOV, photographer unknown) — Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Harold Urey

1893–1981 · United States · Born in the 1800s

Nobel Chemistry 1934

American physical chemist who discovered deuterium (Nobel 1934); he later pioneered isotope geochemistry and planetary science and directed the famous Miller–Urey experiment on the origin of life.

Nobel Prize work

In 1931 Urey and coworkers spectroscopically proved the existence of deuterium and isolated the heavy isotope by fractional distillation of liquid hydrogen, showing that it shares hydrogen's chemistry with twice the mass — the founding discovery of isotope chemistry.

Fields

Physical chemistry

Related topics

Subatomic particles, isotopes, atomic number, mass number

Use proton, neutron and electron counts to identify atoms and ions. Isotopes share an atomic number but have different mass numbers.

Isotopes, α, β, γ decay

The nuclear algebra of nuclide notation and decay modes, balancing nuclear equations, and mapping the 14-step uranium-238 decay chain.

Prebiotic chemistry

How geochemical energy and feedstocks can generate and organize molecular building blocks relevant to the origin of life, without assuming that any single pathway is established.

Chemists in the same field

William F. Giauque (1895)Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov (1896)Robert S. Mulliken (1896)Cyril Norman Hinshelwood (1897)Odd Hassel (1897)Ronald G. W. Norrish (1897)