Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Harold C. Urey: 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Harold C. Urey: 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Discovery
Before Urey actually tested it, other chemists had theorized that there might be a small concerntration of a heavy isotope form of hydrogen.
He hypothesized that if liquid hydrogen is slowly evaporated, the heavy hydrogen would remain in the residue.
His hypothesis was correct, and he was able to produce a residue that contained enough of the isotope to be detected with a spectroscope.
he went on to win the 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery.
Later Experiments
Urey went on to apply this concept to isotopes of heavier elements, and by the late 1930s, he was able to create high concentrations of isotopes such as Carbon-13 and Nitrogen-15.
When World War II struck America, he directed the production of Isotopes of Boron, Hydrogen, and Uranium (to be used in Nuclear Weapons). He also separated the rare isotope Uranium-235 from Uranium-238, which was essential to the creation of the atom bomb.
Deuterium was later used in the more destructive H-bomb.
Education
Heavy Hydrogen
He graduated from the University of Montana in 1917 with a Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Chemistry. He recieved his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1923 from the University of California.
Works Cited
Or Deuterium, is an isotope of Hydrogen with an atomic weight of 2 (double mass of normal hydrogen) because it has one proton and one neutron. It is a stable atomic species and can be found in 0.014-0.015% of natural hydrogen compounds.
Early Life
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1934/urey-bio.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/619727/Harold-C-Urey#toc260850
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/earth/p_urey.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/159684/deuterium
http://www.nndb.com/people/873/000092597/
Urey was born in Indiana in 1893. After graduating high school, he taught in rural public schools before deciding to attend the University of Montana.
Teaching
After earning his Doctorate, he spent the following year working at Niels Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. Upon his return to the US, he became an Associate of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. In 1929 he was appointed Associate Professor of Chemistry at Columbia, and was promoted to Professor in 1934. From 1940-1945 he was also the Director of War Research and the Atomic Bomb project at Columbia. In 1945 he moved to the Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago. From 1956-1957 he was a visiting professor at University of Oxford. in 1958 he took his final post as Professor-at-Large at University of California