Harold C. Urey, (born April 29, 1893, Walkerton, Ind., U.S.—died Jan. 5, 1981, La Jolla, Calif.), U.S. scientist. He received his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley and thereafter taught at various universities. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1934 for discovering deuterium and heavy water. He was a key figure in the development of the atomic bomb; his group worked on the gaseous diffusion process for separation of uranium-235. He devised methods for estimating the temperature of ancient oceans, theorized on the compositions of primordial atmospheres, and studied the relative abundances of the elements, making fundamental contributions to a widely accepted theory of the origin of the Earth and other planets in The Planets, (1952).
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Nobel Prize Summary
Nobel Prize, any of the prizes (five in number until 1969, when a sixth was added) that are awarded annually from a fund bequeathed for that purpose by the Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel. The Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards given for intellectual
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Manhattan Project Summary
Manhattan Project, U.S. government research project (1942–45) that produced the first atomic bombs. See Britannica’s interactive timeline of the Manhattan Project. American scientists, many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe, took steps in 1939 to organize a project to exploit the
chemistry Summary
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