Abstract
PROF. HAROLD C. UREY, of Columbia University, has been awarded the Willard Gibbs medal of the. Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society for his discovery of ‘heavy water’. Prof. Urey, at the age of forty-one years, is the youngest man ever to receive this honour. He was born in Walkerton, Ind., on April 29, 1893. In 1917 he was graduated from the University of Montana with the degree of bachelor of science in zoology. In 1923 he received the Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the University of California. He received an American-Scandinavian fellowship for research in 1923–24, studying under Prof. N. Bohr at Copenhagen. He was assistant in chemistry at Johns Hopkins University in 1924–29, and has been associate professor of chemistry at Columbia since 1929. The Willard Gibbs medal, founded by William A. Converse in 1911, was named after Josiah Willard Gibbs, professor of mathematical physics at Yale University from 1871 until 1903, who, although not primarily a chemist, did much to advance the science of chemistry. It is awarded annually by the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society to a scientific worker ‘whose work in either pure or applied science has received worldwide recognition’. The award is determined by a national jury of men of science. The first Gibbs medallist was Svante Arrhenius of Sweden.
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Prof. Harold C. Urey. Nature 133, 284 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133284c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133284c0