Stanley Miller

Stanley Miller

Stanley Lloyd Miller (March 7, 1930 – May 20, 2007) was an American chemist who made landmark experiments in the origin of life by demonstrating that a wide range of vital organic compounds can be synthesized by fairly simple chemical processes from inorganic substances. In 1952 he carried out the Miller–Urey experiment, which showed that complex organic molecules could be synthesised from inorganic precursors. The experiment was widely reported, and provided support for the idea that the chemical evolution of the early Earth had led to the natural synthesis of chemical building blocks of life from inanimate inorganic molecules. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Stanley Miller has received more than 273,010 page views. His biography is available in 40 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 37 in 2019). Stanley Miller is the 152nd most popular chemist (down from 147th in 2019), the 1,061st most popular biography from United States (up from 1,126th in 2019) and the 28th most popular American Chemist.

Stanley Miller is most famous for his work in the 1950s in which he attempted to recreate the conditions of the early Earth. He did this by passing an electric current through a mixture of water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen. The experiment produced a variety of organic molecules, including amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins.