August 21, 2016 Sunday
As Bits painstakingly plans out the case, I wonder what the
evil is scheming.
Bedtime Story
Since we are talking about Harold Urey, I would like to linger over another of his great experimental work.
Urey was primarily a chemist world famous for isotope separation.
The 1934 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Urey "for his discovery of heavy hydrogen".
But later in life, some where in late 1940s and early 1950s he helped developed the new field of cosmochemistry.
Somewhere at that time, when he was delivering a lecture, a young man by the name of Stanley Miller, then only 20 years old, was attending and listening to very keenly.
Urey's lecture was on the origin of the solar system and how organic synthesis could be possible under the reducing environment that was present in the primitive earth.
Miller had joined the University of Chicago in 1951 for his PhD and was frantically searching for a thesis topic to work upon.
He had met many professors and was tending to go towards theoretical problems such as synthesis of elements in stars.
Experimental work is always tedious and most of us would not be able to set up a single original experiment, no matter how good we may be in cracking exams and building our careers.
Miller was immensely galvanized by Urey's lecture.
Miller approached Urey in September 1952
(Miller was then 22 and Urey was 59)
for a new research idea.
Miller wanted to test the idea that were first proposed by the Soviet biochemist Alexander Oparin in 1922.
Alexander Oparin, as early as 1922, had put forth these 4 revolutionary propositions:
1. There is no fundamental difference between a living organism and lifeless matter.
2. On account of the discovery of methane in Jupiter and other large planets, the infant earth must have possessed a strongly reducing atmosphere.
3. At first, simple organic solutions of organic matter had formed by simple arrangement of atoms into molecules.
The growth and complexity of these molecules lead to emergence of new properties.
4. This led to biology after which competition, speed of cell growth, struggle for existence and finally natural selection led to the past and modern life forms.
At first Urey did not show much enthusiasm Miller's interest in pre-biotic synthesis since no rewarding work had been done on it previously.
But the young Miller persisted.
This eventually led to the landmark Miller-Urey Experiment of 1953 that I shall discuss hopefully tomorrow if I get time.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
As Bits painstakingly plans out the case, I wonder what the
evil is scheming.
Bedtime Story
Since we are talking about Harold Urey, I would like to linger over another of his great experimental work.
Urey was primarily a chemist world famous for isotope separation.
The 1934 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Urey "for his discovery of heavy hydrogen".
But later in life, some where in late 1940s and early 1950s he helped developed the new field of cosmochemistry.
Somewhere at that time, when he was delivering a lecture, a young man by the name of Stanley Miller, then only 20 years old, was attending and listening to very keenly.
Urey's lecture was on the origin of the solar system and how organic synthesis could be possible under the reducing environment that was present in the primitive earth.
Miller had joined the University of Chicago in 1951 for his PhD and was frantically searching for a thesis topic to work upon.
He had met many professors and was tending to go towards theoretical problems such as synthesis of elements in stars.
Experimental work is always tedious and most of us would not be able to set up a single original experiment, no matter how good we may be in cracking exams and building our careers.
Miller was immensely galvanized by Urey's lecture.
Miller approached Urey in September 1952
(Miller was then 22 and Urey was 59)
for a new research idea.
Miller wanted to test the idea that were first proposed by the Soviet biochemist Alexander Oparin in 1922.
Alexander Oparin, as early as 1922, had put forth these 4 revolutionary propositions:
1. There is no fundamental difference between a living organism and lifeless matter.
2. On account of the discovery of methane in Jupiter and other large planets, the infant earth must have possessed a strongly reducing atmosphere.
3. At first, simple organic solutions of organic matter had formed by simple arrangement of atoms into molecules.
The growth and complexity of these molecules lead to emergence of new properties.
4. This led to biology after which competition, speed of cell growth, struggle for existence and finally natural selection led to the past and modern life forms.
At first Urey did not show much enthusiasm Miller's interest in pre-biotic synthesis since no rewarding work had been done on it previously.
But the young Miller persisted.
This eventually led to the landmark Miller-Urey Experiment of 1953 that I shall discuss hopefully tomorrow if I get time.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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