Harold Clayton Urey (April 29, 1893 – January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 and later led him to theories of planetary evolution.
Urey was born in Walkerton, Indiana to Reverend Samuel Clayton Urey and Cora Rebecca Riensehl. After briefly teaching in rural schools, Urey earned a degree in zoology from the University of Montana and a Ph.D. in chemistry, s...
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Harold Clayton Urey (April 29, 1893 – January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 and later led him to theories of planetary evolution.
Urey was born in Walkerton, Indiana to Reverend Samuel Clayton Urey and Cora Rebecca Riensehl. After briefly teaching in rural schools, Urey earned a degree in zoology from the University of Montana and a Ph.D. in chemistry, studying thermodynamics under Gilbert N. Lewis at the University of California at Berkeley.
At Berkeley, Urey was influenced by the work of physicist Raymond T. Birge and soon joined Niels Bohr in Copenhagen to work on atomic structure at the Institute for Theoretical Physics. On his return to the U.S. and between 1924 and 1928, he taught at The Johns Hopkins University as 'Associate in Chemistry', and then at Columbia where he assembled a team of associates that included Rudolph Schoenheimer, David Rittenberg and T. I. Taylor. After completion...
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