Harold Urey

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Harold Urey
La Jolla, California, U.S.
Alma mater
Earlham College
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysical chemistry
Institutions
Doctoral advisorGilbert N. Lewis
Doctoral students
Signature

Harold Clayton Urey

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

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

Institute for Nuclear Studies, and later Ryerson professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago
.

Urey speculated that the early terrestrial

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]

Early life

Harold Clayton Urey was born on April 29, 1893, in Walkerton, Indiana, the son of Samuel Clayton Urey,[3][4] a school teacher and a minister in the Church of the Brethren,[5] and his wife, Cora Rebecca née Reinoehl.[6] Of mostly German ancestry, the family name had English origins.[7] He had a younger brother, Clarence, and a younger sister, Martha. The family moved to Glendora, California, after Samuel became seriously ill with tuberculosis, in hopes that the climate would improve his health. When it became clear that he would die, the family moved back to Indiana to live with Cora's widowed mother. Samuel died when Harold was six years old.[8][4]

Urey was educated in an Amish grade school, from which he graduated at the age of 14. He then attended high school in Kendallville, Indiana.[6] After graduating in 1911, he obtained a teacher's certificate from Earlham College,[9] and taught in a small school house in Indiana. He later moved to Montana, where his mother was then living, and continued to teach there.[5]

Urey entered the

Missoula in the autumn of 1914.[10] Unlike Eastern universities of the time, the University of Montana was co-educational in both students and teachers.[4] Urey earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in zoology there in 1917.[11]

As a result of the

United States entry into World War I that same year, there was strong pressure to support the war effort. Urey had been raised in a religious sect that opposed war. One of his professors suggested that he support the wartime effort by working as a chemist. Urey took a job with the Barrett Chemical Company in Philadelphia, making TNT, rather than joining the army as a soldier.[4] After the war, he returned to the University of Montana as an instructor in chemistry.[12][9]

An academic career required a doctorate, so in 1921 Urey enrolled in a

Georg von Hevesy, and John Slater. At the conclusion of his stay, he traveled to Germany, where he met Albert Einstein and James Franck.[17]

On returning to the United States, Urey received an offer of a

Seattle, Washington, to visit his mother. On the way, he stopped by Everett, Washington, where he knew Dr. Kate Daum, a colleague from the University of Montana.[18] Dr. Daum introduced Urey to her sister, Frieda. Urey and Frieda soon became engaged. They were married at her father's house in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1926.[12] The couple had four children: Gertrude Bessie (Elizabeth), born in 1927; Frieda Rebecca, born in 1929; Mary Alice, born in 1934; and John Clayton Urey, born in 1939.[19]

At Johns Hopkins, Urey and

Arthur Ruark wrote Atoms, Quanta and Molecules (1930), one of the first English texts on quantum mechanics and its applications to atomic and molecular systems.[17] In 1929, Urey became an associate professor of chemistry at Columbia University, where his colleagues included Rudolph Schoenheimer, David Rittenberg, and T. I. Taylor.[20]

Deuterium

In the 1920s,

Donald Menzel hypothesized that hydrogen had more than one isotope as well. Based upon the difference between the results of the two methods, they predicted that only one hydrogen atom in 4,500 was of the heavy isotope.[21]

In 1931, Urey set out to find it. Urey and George M. Murphy (1903–1968)

spectrograph, a sensitive device that had been recently installed at Columbia and was capable of resolving the Balmer series. With a resolution of 1 Å per millimetre, the machine should have produced a difference of about 1 millimetre.[24] However, since only one atom in 4,500 was heavy, the line on the spectrograph was very faint. Urey therefore decided to delay publishing their results until he had more conclusive evidence that it was heavy hydrogen.[21]

Urey and Murphy calculated from the

National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., where they obtained the help of Ferdinand Brickwedde, whom Urey had known at Johns Hopkins.[24]

The first sample that Brickwedde sent was evaporated at 20 K (−253.2 °C; −423.7 °F) at a pressure of 1 standard atmosphere (100 kPa). To their surprise, this showed no evidence of enrichment. Brickwedde then prepared a second sample evaporated at 14 K (−259.1 °C; −434.5 °F) at a pressure of 53 mmHg (7.1 kPa). On this sample, the Balmer lines for heavy hydrogen were seven times as intense.[21] The paper announcing the discovery of heavy hydrogen, later named deuterium, was jointly published by Urey, Murphy, and Brickwedde in 1932.[25] Urey was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 "for his discovery of heavy hydrogen".[26] He declined to attend the ceremony in Stockholm, so that he could be present at the birth of his daughter Mary Alice.[27] He was elected to both the American Philosophical Society and the United States National Academy of Sciences the following year.[28][29]

Working with Edward W. Washburn from the Bureau of Standards, Urey subsequently discovered the cause of the anomalous sample. Brickwedde's hydrogen had been separated from water by electrolysis, resulting in a depleted sample. Moreover, Francis William Aston had reported that his calculated value for the atomic weight of hydrogen was wrong, thereby invalidating Birge and Menzel's original reasoning. The discovery of deuterium stood, however.[21]

Urey and Washburn attempted to use electrolysis to create pure

Journal of Chemical Physics in 1932, and was its first editor, serving in that capacity until 1940.[32]

At Columbia, Urey chaired the University Federation for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom. He supported

democracies, and the republican cause during the Spanish Civil War. He was an early opponent of German Nazism and assisted refugee scientists, including Enrico Fermi, by helping them find work in the United States, and to adjust to life in a new country.[33]

Manhattan Project

By the time World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, Urey was recognized as a world expert on isotope separation. Thus far, separation had involved only the light elements. In 1939 and 1940, Urey published two papers on the separation of heavier isotopes in which he proposed centrifugal separation. This assumed great importance due to speculation by Niels Bohr that

thermal diffusion.[37] Urey coordinated all isotope separation research efforts, including the effort to produce heavy water, which could be used as a neutron moderator in nuclear reactors.[38][39]

Arthur H. Compton
.

In May 1941, Urey was appointed to the

SAM Laboratories) at Columbia, which was responsible for the heavy water and all the isotope enrichment processes except Ernest Lawrence's electromagnetic process.[43]

Early reports on the centrifugal method indicated that it was not as efficient as predicted. Urey suggested that a more efficient but technically more complicated countercurrent system be used instead of the previous flow-through method. By November 1941, technical obstacles seemed formidable enough for the process to be abandoned.[44] Countercurrent centrifuges were developed after the war, and today are the favored method in many countries.[45]

The gaseous diffusion process remained more encouraging, although it too had technical obstacles to overcome.[46] By the end of 1943, Urey had over 700 people working for him on gaseous diffusion.[47] The process involved hundreds of cascades, in which corrosive uranium hexafluoride diffused through gaseous barriers, becoming progressively more enriched at every stage.[46] A major problem was finding proper seals for the pumps, but by far the greatest difficulty lay in constructing an appropriate diffusion barrier.[48] Construction of the huge K-25 gaseous diffusion plant was well under way before a suitable barrier became available in quantity in 1944. As a backup, Urey championed thermal diffusion.[49]

Worn out by the effort, Urey left the project in February 1945, handing over his responsibilities to R. H. Crist.

Leslie R. Groves, Jr.[50]

Post-war years

After the war, Urey became professor of chemistry at the

belemnite then indicated the summer and winter temperatures that it had lived through over a period of four years. For this pioneering paleoclimatic research, Urey was awarded the Arthur L. Day Medal by the Geological Society of America, and the Goldschmidt Medal of the Geochemical Society.[52] While at the University of Chicago, Urey contributed to the Urey–Bigeleisen–Mayer equation
, a model of stable isotope fractionation.

Miller–Urey experiment

Urey actively campaigned against the 1946

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee.[53]

Cosmochemistry and the Miller–Urey experiment

In later life, Urey helped develop the field of

amino acids, commonly considered the building blocks of life.[54]

Urey spent a year in the United Kingdom as a visiting professor at

professor emeritus there from 1970 to 1981.[56][57][9] Urey helped build up the science faculty there. He was one of the founding members of UCSD's school of chemistry, which was created in 1960, along with Stanley Miller, Hans Suess, and Jim Arnold.[56][58]

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, space science became a topic of research in the wake of the launch of Sputnik 1. Urey helped persuade NASA to make uncrewed probes to the Moon a priority. When Apollo 11 returned Moon rock samples from the Moon, Urey examined them at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. The samples supported Urey's contention that the Moon and the Earth shared a common origin.[56][58] While at UCSD, Urey published 105 scientific papers, 47 of them about lunar topics. When asked why he continued to work so hard, he joked, "Well, you know I'm not on tenure anymore."[59]

Death and legacy

Urey enjoyed gardening and raising

orchids.[60] He died at La Jolla, California, and is buried in the Fairfield Cemetery in DeKalb County, Indiana.[9]

Apart from his Nobel Prize, he also won the

H. C. Urey Prize, awarded for achievement in planetary sciences by the American Astronomical Society.[65] The Harold C. Urey Middle School in Walkerton, Indiana, is also named for him,[66] as is Urey Hall, the chemistry building at Revelle College, UCSD, in La Jolla[67] and the Harold C. Urey Lecture Hall at the University of Montana.[68] UCSD has also established a Harold C. Urey chair whose first holder was James Arnold.[69]

Urey's daughter, Elizabeth Baranger, also became a notable physicist.[70]

See also

Notes

  1. S2CID 10807049
    .
  2. ^ Harrison "Jack" Schmitt – 1903–1969 Wrights to Armstrong (YouTube video posted February 29, 2016, by the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition)
  3. ^ Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, p. 7.
  4. ^ a b c d Shindell, Matthew (2019). The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
  5. ^ a b Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 365.
  6. ^ a b Housholder, Terry. "Kendallville graduate worked on Manhattan Project in World War II – Drr. Harold C. Urey was Noble Prize Winner in Chemistry". KPC News. Archived from the original on January 5, 2009. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  7. ^ Urey, Harold (March 3, 1965). "Harold Urey's Interview". Voices of the Manhattan Project (Interview). Interviewed by Stephane Groueff. Atomic Heritage Foundation. Retrieved January 20, 2024. The name is English. All the rest of my grandparents are German. Their names are Hofstettler. Hofstettler is a corruption. It was Hochstettler or something. And Eckhart and Reinoehl, very German, you see.
  8. ^ Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, p. 8.
  9. ^ a b c d e f "Harold C. Urey". Soylent Communications. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  10. ^ Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, p. 15.
  11. ^ Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, p. 72.
  12. ^ a b Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, pp. 19–20.
  13. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 366.
  14. ^ Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, p. 26.
  15. ^ "Harold Urey - Session I". American Institute of Physics. March 24, 1964. Retrieved December 31, 2018.
  16. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 367.
  17. ^ a b Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 368.
  18. ^ Langton, Diane. "Time Machine: How nutritionist Kate Daum left her mark at the University of Iowa". The Gazette. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  19. ^ Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, pp. 37, 47–48, 72.
  20. ^ "The Priestley Medal – 1973: Harold C. Urey (1893–1981)". Chemical and Engineering News. 86 (14). April 7, 2008. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  21. ^
    ISSN 0031-9228
    .
  22. doi:10.1063/1.3035446
    .
  23. ^ Powell, William S., ed. (1991). "Murphy, George Moseley 1 June 1903-7 Dec. 1968 by Maurice M. Bursey". Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (ncpedia.org). In 1936 George M. Murphy was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
  24. ^ a b Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, pp. 370–371.
  25. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.39.164
    .
  26. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1934". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  27. ^ Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, p. 47.
  28. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  29. ^ "Harold Urey". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  30. ^ Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, p. 45.
  31. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, pp. 373–375.
  32. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 392.
  33. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 389.
  34. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, pp. 377–378.
  35. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, p. 22.
  36. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 21–22.
  37. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 30–32.
  38. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 379.
  39. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 45, 50.
  40. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, p. 75.
  41. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, p. 44.
  42. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 63–64.
  43. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 128–129.
  44. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 97, 108.
  45. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 381.
  46. ^ a b Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 97–101.
  47. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 382.
  48. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 124–129.
  49. ^ a b Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 629–630.
  50. ^ a b Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, pp. 51–52.
  51. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 383.
  52. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, pp. 376–377.
  53. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, pp. 389–390.
  54. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, pp. 385–386.
  55. ^ "Harold C. Urey – Biographical". Retrieved April 6, 2014.
  56. ^ a b c Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, pp. 386–387.
  57. ^ Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, pp. 62–64.
  58. ^ a b Silverstein & Silverstein 1970, pp. 66–68.
  59. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 393.
  60. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, p. 394.
  61. American Academy of Achievement
    .
  62. ^ Arnold, Bigeleisen & Hutchison 1995, pp. 395–398.
  63. JSTOR 769815
    .
  64. ^ "4716 Urey (1989 UL5)". NASA. Retrieved August 9, 2013.
  65. ^ "Harold C. Urey Prize in Planetary Science". Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. Retrieved August 9, 2013.
  66. ^ "Harold C. Urey Middle School". USA.com. Retrieved August 9, 2013.
  67. ^ "Urey Hall". University of California, San Diego. Retrieved August 9, 2013.
  68. ^ "UM's Urey Lecture Hall Transformation Nears Completion". University of Montana. August 7, 2020. Retrieved September 10, 2021. Urey Hall was named after UM alumni and instructor Harold C. Urey, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1934 for his discovery of deuterium, the heavy form of hydrogen.
  69. ^ "Dr James R. Arnold". University of California, San Diego. Retrieved August 9, 2013.
  70. ^ Carpenter, Mackenzie (May 30, 2004), "Newsmaker: Elizabeth Baranger / Pioneering woman professor at Pitt shuns spotlight", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

References

External links
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