Stanley Lloyd Miller (born March 7, 1930) is an American chemist famous for his role in the Miller-Urey experiment he performed in 1953, while a graduate student. The experiment showed that organic substances (i.e. amino acids) could be produced in the primordial soup of ancient Earth. Born in Oakland, California, he received a B.S. from University of California, Berkeley, where he was a student of Harold Urey. Miller received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1954, and is currently a chemistry professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. March 7 is the 66th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (67th in leap years). ... 1930 (MCMXXX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link is to a full 1930 calendar). ... A chemist pours from a Florence flask. ... The Miller-Urey experiment attempts to recreate the chemical conditions of the primitive Earth in the laboratory, and synthesized some of the building blocks of life. ... 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday. ... Oakland, founded in 1852, is the eighth-largest city in California and the county seat of Alameda County. ... The University of California, Berkeley (also known as UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, and by other names, see below) is the oldest and flagship campus of the ten-campus University of California system. ... Harold Urey, circa 1963. ... The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. ... 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Emeritus (IPA pronunciation: or ) is an adjective that is used in the title of a retired professor, bishop or other professional. ... The University of California, San Diego (popularly known as UCSD) is a public, coeducational university located in La Jolla, California. ...

Lucas Pruch Biology/English report

“Did we come from comet dust”(“Meteorites and Life”)? Well, in his world famous experiment working with Noble Prize winner Harold Urey at the University of Chicago, Stanley Lloyd Miller would try to answer this question. Not much is known about the early life of Stanley Lloyd Miller before his famous experiment as he is a very private individual. He was born on March 7, 1930 in Oakland California. His parents Nathan Harry Miller, an attorney, and Edith Levy Miller, a homemaker raised him to become a world famous American chemist. Miller received his Bachelor of Science or B.S. Degree from the University of California at Berkley, in 1951. In that same year he began his graduate studies, working toward his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. While at the University of Chicago, Miller attended a seminar given by Noble Prize winner, Harold Urey on the origins of the solar system. In the seminar Urey stated that the condition of the early atmosphere would have probably been capable of synthesizing organic compounds, Miller was inspired by the seminar. After the seminar Miller decided to change his doctoral thesis, a paper written by a student in college in order to receive a doctoral degree, from the original experiment that he had planned. He decided to design an experiment in which he could prove Urey’s idea, by synthesizing organic compounds in an artificial atmosphere similar to that of the early atmosphere of earth. When Urey, his professor, heard about Miller’s plans, he told him that the new experiment would be way to risky and time consuming for Miller to try to complete by the deadline for the thesis. Miller knew that it would take a lot of hard work and time, and still wanted to try it. Urey agreed to let Miller try the experiment and said that he would give him one year in order to get results, so Miller set out to begin his experiment, with the help of his professor. For Miller and Urey’s first trial of the experiment they filled a glass unit that Miller had designed specifically for the experiment, with the gases that the two men thought would have been present in the “primitive atmosphere.” These gases included methane, hydrogen, water, and ammonia. Over the next night the mixture was left in the unit, exposed to a low voltage spark of electricity. The next day when the two men returned to the lab to look for any amino acids in the glass unit, there was a thin layer of hydrocarbons on the glass, but there were no amino acids to be found. They knew that this was probably going to happen, so their hopes were not lost yet, they just repeated the experiment but with a few slight changes. When Miller and Urey repeated the experiment this time, they decided that if they used a higher voltage of electricity they might get results. They also thought that they should leave the mixture exposed to the spark of electricity for a longer period of time, so this time they left if for two days. After this trial they found no hydrocarbons, but to their excitement the found an amino acid in the form of glycine. One amino acid wasn’t enough though so they repeated the experiment one more time. For the third and final trial Miller and Urey decided to use the same spark voltage as the previous trial and to leave the mixture exposed to the spark for an entire week. They thought that by doing this they could get more than one type of amino acid, which would give evidence that the conditions of the early atmosphere could synthesize organic compounds, if indeed their artificial atmosphere was a proper representation of the actual primitive atmosphere. At the end of the week when they gathered the results, they found seven “spots” in the glass unit. The men easily identified three of the seven spots as glycine, the same as found in the previous trial, alpha-alanine, and beta alanine. Two of the others were identified as a-amino-n-butyric acid and a crystalline amino acid known as aspartic acid. The two remaining “spots” could not be identified by either of the two scientists, so they were labeled as “A” and “B.” In later experiments, working without Urey, Miller found that what they had classified as aspartic acid was really iminodiacetic acid. He also Found that the “spots” previously identified as “A” and “B” were really sarcosine and N-methyl-alanine. After the final trial of the experiment the two men agreed that though the spots were good evidence, but that they could have possibly been caused by bacteria. After Miller finished this experiment with Harold Urey at the University of Chicago, he went to the California Institute of Technology where he continued his research. He was there from 1954 until 1955, during this time Miller performed tests to try and figure out what the specific amino acids were that he and Urey had created in their world famous experiment while at the University of Chicago. Also while at the California Institute of Technology Miller did some other testing that eliminated the idea that the “spots” in his experiment with Harold Urey, one year earlier could have been produced by bacteria. He did this be redoing the experiment. This time he heated the artificial atmosphere inside his specially designed glass unit long enough so that no bacteria could have possibly survived. It would have only taken about fifteen minutes for the heat to kill all of the bacteria that might have been in the unit but to be sure, Miller decided to leave it heated for eighteen hours. After Miller repeated the experiment, heating the unit in order to kill any bacteria that might have been present in the artificial atmosphere, he and several other scientists who had also repeated the same experiment, all got similar results. This was good because it supported the results of the original Miller-Urey experiments from 1952, but there was still one big problem: Miller nor the others that tried the experiment knew if the artificial atmosphere that they had created was really a correct representation of the actual primitive atmosphere. About thirteen years later the big question was answered, when a meteorite fell in the town of Murchison, Australia. “Comets and meteors have been raining debris on earth for billions of years, and scientists think they just may be the vehicles that carried the “stuff of life” to our planet”(“Meteorites and Life”). The meteorite in Murchison fell in September of 1969, and when tests were conducted on samples of the meteorite the results were amazing. There were amino acids in the meteorite sample were very similar to those that Miller and Urey had found in the artificial atmosphere they created in their famous experiment in 1952. This discovery meant that Miller and Urey were indeed correct that the building blocks of life, in the form of amino acids, could have been transported to earth by meteorites. Though the discovery of the amino acids in the Murchison Meteorite proved that the building blocks of life were transported to earth by meteorites, it leaves one very big blank: How were the building blocks converted or put together to form organisms. In other words these results, along with those of the Miller-Urey experiment supported the idea that the conditions of primitive earth were capable of the synthesis of organic materials, they did not prove living organisms could also be synthesized under the same conditions. Scientists like Miller are only starting to understand how these organic compounds, that were transported to earth, were converted to polymers, or substances with molecular structures formed from many identical molecules blended together on the primitive earth. They are working to find answers to how the polymers were then converted to the organisms they are now. Miller has been and is still continuing his research, still living in California where he was born and where he spent most of his life. After earning his Bachelor of Science Degree at the University of California at Berkley, and his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago where he also did his famous experiment, Stanley Miller the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Colombia University. He spent five years there in the biochemistry department where he continued his research. In 1960 Miller returned to the University of California at San Diego where he worked as an assistant professor. After two years as an assistant professor he became an associate professor, and soon after, he finally reached the top of the “professor pyramid” when he became a full professor in the chemistry department. Some of Stanley Miller’s attributes include his status as an honorary Councillor of the Higher Council fo Scientific Research of Spain. Some of Miller’s other attributes include his service as the president of the International Society for the Study of the Origins of Life, he served from 1986 until 1989. This organization also awarded Miller the Oparin Medal for his work in the field, and his experiments, before he became their president. He was awarded the medal in 1983, three years before becoming president of the organization. Miller is also an active member Sigma Xi, an organization founded in 1886 that honors excellence in science, and Phi Betta Kappa, an organization founded in 1776 at the college of William and Mary. This organization recognizes excellence in the arts and sciences such as Miller’s famous experiment with Harold Urey. The American Association for the Advancement of Science that was founded in 1848. The “AAAS”, as this organization is also known as, serves 262 societies and academes of science and also over 10 million individuals. The American Society of Biological Chemists which was founded in 1906, also lists Stanley Miller as a member. Stanley Miller’s research and experiments have been great contributions to the modern world of science as they have helped to explain the origins of life and have also helped to answer the question of where we came from. To this day Stanley Miller is still living in Oakland, California where he was born. He is now seventy-six years old and is unmarried.