Uploaded May 2007 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Stanley Miller, 77; chemist was a pioneer in studying the origins of life.
Stanley L. Miller has died. Working under the supervision of Harold Urey, he ran the first experiments that produced the molecular building blocks of life from hydrogen, water, methane, and ammonia. Blog commenter Zeno sums it up:
The experiment showed definitively that chemical compounds associated with organic life could be generated in the absence of life. If Miller and Urey made assumptions about the early earth that are no longer generally accepted, that's entirely beside the point. Since the Miller-Urey breakthrough, their seminal experiment has been run under many different assumptions about primeval environments and the results confirm the original key finding: precursors of organic life can arise in many different circumstances
Stanley Miller, 77; chemist was a pioneer in studying the origins of life.
Stanley L. Miller has died. Working under the supervision of Harold Urey, he ran the first experiments that produced the molecular building blocks of life from hydrogen, water, methane, and ammonia. Blog commenter Zeno sums it up:
The experiment showed definitively that chemical compounds associated with organic life could be generated in the absence of life. If Miller and Urey made assumptions about the early earth that are no longer generally accepted, that's entirely beside the point. Since the Miller-Urey breakthrough, their seminal experiment has been run under many different assumptions about primeval environments and the results confirm the original key finding: precursors of organic life can arise in many different circumstances
