Stanley Miller
| Stanley Lloyd Miller | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
March 7, 1930 Oakland, California, United States |
| Died | May 20, 2007 (aged 77) National City, California, United States |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Chemistry |
| Institutions |
University of Chicago Columbia University University of California, San Diego |
| Alma mater | University of California at Berkeley |
| Doctoral advisor | Harold Urey |
| Doctoral students | Jeffrey Bada |
| Known for | Abiogenesis |
| Notable awards | Oparin Medal |
Stanley Lloyd Miller (March 7, 1930 – May 20, 2007) was an American chemist who made landmark experiments in the origin of life by demonstrating that a wide range of vital organic compounds can be synthesized by fairly simple chemical processes from inorganic substances. In 1952 he carried out the Miller–Urey experiment, which showed that complex organic molecules could be synthesised from inorganic precursors. The experiment was widely reported, and provided support for the idea that the chemical evolution of the early Earth had led to the natural synthesis of chemical building blocks of life from inanimate inorganic molecules. He has been described as the "father of prebiotic chemistry".
Stanley Miller was born in Oakland, California. He was the second child (after a brother, Donald) of Nathan and Edith Miller, descendants of Jewish immigrants from Belarus and Latvia. His father was an attorney and held the office of the Oakland Deputy District Attorney in 1927. His mother was a school teacher so that education was quite a natural environment in the family. In fact, while in Oakland High School he was nicknamed "a chem whiz". He followed his brother to the University of California at Berkeley to study chemistry mainly because he felt that Donald would be able to help him on the subject. He completed BSc in June 1951. For graduation course, he faced financial problems, as his father died in 1946 leaving the family with a money shortage. Fortunately with the help from Berkeley faculty (UC Berkeley did not then have assistantships), he was offered teaching an assistantship at the University of Chicago in February 1951, which could provide the basic funds for graduate work. He joined this post and got registered for a PhD program in September. He frantically searched for a thesis topic to work on, meeting one professor after another, and he was inclined toward theoretical problems as experiments tended to be laborious. He was initially convinced to work with the theoretical physicist Edward Teller on synthesis of elements. Following the customs of the university, where a graduate student is obliged to attend seminars, he attended a chemistry seminar in which the Nobel laureate Harold Urey gave a lecture on the origin of solar system and how organic synthesis could be possible under reducing environment such as the primitive Earth's atmosphere. Miller was immensely inspired. After a year of fruitless work with Teller, and the prospect of Teller leaving Chicago to work on the Hydrogen bomb, Miller was prompted to approach Urey in September 1952 for a fresh research project. Urey was not immediately enthusiastic on Miller's interest in pre-biotic synthesis, as no successful works had been done, and he even suggested working on thallium in meteorites. With persistence Miller persuaded Urey to pursue electric discharges in gases. He found clear evidence for the production of amino acids in the reaction vessel. He was always afraid that some specks of fly excrement might be the source of the amino acids he discovered in the reaction tube (or was so chided by his classmates). This was not the case and the result was a clear demonstration that a host of "organic" chemical compounds could be produced by purely inorganic processes. Miller eventually earned his doctorate degree in 1954, and a long-lasting reputation. From spectroscopic observations on stars, it is now well known that complex organic compounds are formed in the gases blown off of carbon rich stars as a result of chemical reactions. The fundamental issue of what the connection was between the "pre-biotic organic" compounds and the origin of life has remained.
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