KENDALLVILLE
- No Kendallville High School graduate received more acclaim for
his work than Dr. Harold Clayton Urey.By TERRY HOUSHOLDER
KENDALLVILLE
- No Kendallville High School graduate received more acclaim for
his work than Dr. Harold Clayton Urey.
A member of the Class of 1911, Urey became a renowned scientist
who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1934. He later took part
in the research leading to the production of the atomic bomb in
World War II.
Born April 29, 1893, in Walkerton, he was the son of the Rev.
Samuel Clayton and Cora Rebecca (Reinoehl) Urey. His father, a
teacher and minister, died when he was 6 years old.
After attending an Amish grade school, Urey attended four years
of high school in Kendallville.
According to a high school classmate, the late Marguerite Cramer,
as a boy Urey lived in the country near Corunna, but came to live
with his uncle in Kendallville for a time so he could attend high
school.
Urey had a knack for learning, Mrs. Cramer said in a 1981 interview.
His only academic honor prior to attending college was winning
a $5 gold piece while attending Kendallville High School, for
a speech about his boyhood idol, Theodore Roosevelt.
After high school, Urey taught grade school in Noble County
and rural Montana for three years before entering the University
of Montana in 1914.
He graduated from the University of Montana with a bachelor
of science degree in zoology in 1917.
He spent two years as a research chemist in industry before
returning to Montana as an instructor in chemistry.
In 1921 he entered the University of California to work under
Professor Lewis and he was awarded the degree of Ph.D. in chemistry
in 1923. He spent the following year in Copenhagen at Professor
Niels Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics as American-Scandinavian
Foundation Fellow to Denmark and on his return to the United States
he became an associate professor in chemistry at Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, Md.
In 1929 he was appointed associate professor in chemistry at
Columbia University, New York City, and he became professor in
1934.
During the period 1940-1945 he was also director of war research,
Atomic Bomb Project, Columbia University. He moved to the Institute
for Nuclear Studies, University of Chicago, in 1945 as distinguished
service professor of chemistry and became a Martin A. Ryerson
Professor in 1952.
He was a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, in
England, during 1956-1957 and in 1958 he took a post as professor-at-large,
University of California. He held that position until his death
in January 1981.
Urey broke into prominence in December 1931, when he announced
that in working with two other investigators, research assistant
George Murphy and a friend, Ferdinand Brickwedde, Urey had discovered
the existence of heavy hydrogen. This discovery is considered
one of the most important in the history of modern science, and
it was for this discovery that he became a Nobel laureate, which
earned him a monetary award of $50,000.
He was teaching at Columbia University at the time. He continued
to study the problem of isotope separation and developed the gas
distillation process that was successfully used in the creation
of the first atomic bomb when the United States and Nazi Germany
were in a race for development of the weapon.
A lifelong scientific researcher, Urey served as one of the
three program chiefs of the wartime Manhattan Project, which developed
the bomb.
His efforts as head of the special alloy materials program
of the Manhattan Project were rewarded by President Harry Truman,
who presented him the Medal of Merit.
At the end of World War II, Urey joined other scientists in
developing theories attempting to explain the way in which the
world's original chemical elements united to form the universe.
Among his other significant contributions to science were an
oxygen thermometer that makes possible the measure of temperatures
in the ancient seas. He also was an adviser to the national space
effort and lectured on the subject.
''It's very difficult to tell what the cost of the manned flights
to the moon are worth,'' Urey said in a News-Sun interview in
1971. ''Was it worthwhile to build the Parthenon, the cathedrals
of Europe - they are of no industrial importance. How much is
intellectual activity worth to us? I think it is the most valuable
thing there is.''
Urey retired in the beautiful Pacific coastal community of
La Jolla, Calif., north of San Diego. At the time of his death
at the age of 87, he maintained an office on the nearby campus
of the University of California., but spent much of his later
years at home writing.
He was survived by his wife, the former Frieda Daum, whom he married in 1926; three daughters and a son.