SciTech Tuesday: Harold Urey, Manhattan Project Leader

Dr. Harold Urey inspecting a fossilized belemnite in 1951. Image courtesy of the University of Southern California.

Today marks the birthday of Harold C. Urey, the Nobel Prize winning chemist who served as the Director of War Research at Columbia University during the Manhattan Project. Dr. Urey won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen with one proton and one neutron in the nucleus. The far more common isotope of hydrogen, protium, contains just one proton and no neutron in the nucleus. Dr. Urey’s later work simulated early conditions on Earth to investigate the chemical origins of life.

Post by Annie Tête, STEM Education Coordinator