mark. He then became an associate in chemistry at
Johns Hopkins University, where he championed the
application of quantum mechanics to chemistry. He
married Frieda Daum in 1926 and they had four chil-
dren. In 1929 he became associate professor in chem-
istry at Columbia University, finally reaching full
professor in 1934 (to 1945).
In 1931, with F. Brickwedde and G. Murphy, he
discovered deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, for which
Urey was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
He and his team also discovered isotopes of oxygen,
carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur.
During the war period (1940–45), though a paci-
fist, he was director of war research on the Manhattan
Project at Columbia University, and after the war he
moved to the Institute for Nuclear Studies, University
of Chicago, in 1945 as distinguished service professor
of chemistry and as Martin A. Ryerson professor in
- He became an advocate of nuclear arms control,
working with other scientists to promote global coop-
eration and to prevent nuclear proliferation and con-
flict. His other interests were research on the origin and
evolution of life on Earth and the solar system. He also
calculated the temperature of ancient oceans by mea-
suring the isotopic quantities in fossils.
Urey authored Atoms, Molecules and Quanta
(1930, with A. E. Ruark) and The Planets(1952), and
he was editor of the Journal of Chemical Physics
(1933–40). He was awarded numerous honors, prizes,
and awards throughout his lifetime.
He died on January 5, 1981.uric acid The end result of urine breakdown, a prod-
uct of protein metabolism, that is the major pathway
for excreting metabolic nitrogen out of the body. Too
much uric acid in the blood and its salts in joints lead
to gout, which causes pain and swelling in the joints.
When urine contains too much uric acid, “kidney” or
uric-acid stones can develop.uric acid 273