STANLEY MILLER: BIOGRAPHY, EXPERIMENTS, THEORY AND OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS - ARTE - 2025

Stanley Miller (1930-2007) was a chemist and biologist considered by the scientific world as the father of the chemistry of the origins of life on Earth. Much of his fame is due to the famous experiment he conducted with his mentor Harold Urey, an experiment known as Miller-Urey.

Miller discovered that, if the right conditions existed, simple organic compounds present on the planet are capable of creating life. This experiment, which made him famous worldwide, was carried out when the scientist born in the United States was only 23 years old.

Source: web99.arc.nasa.gov/~astrochm/Miller/photo.html, via Wikimedia Commons. Part of his work also consisted of recreating the primitive soup, which is a concept created by Russian biologist Aleksandr Oparin. In all, Miller was the author of more than 60 scientific works that were published over the years.

Biography

Early years

On March 7, 1930, the American chemist Stanley Lloyd Miller was born. He was born in Oakland, in the state of California. He was the second child of the couple Nathan and Edith Miller. The first was his older brother Donald.

His family was descended from Jewish immigrants who had come to the United States after leaving Belarus and the Republic of Latvia. Miller's father was a lawyer and went on to serve as a deputy prosecutor in the Oakland district. For his part, his mother was a school teacher.

From a very young age, Miller was characterized by being a very diligent, passionate student, and an inveterate reader. He had no trouble getting through every grade in Oakland's high school. Even at that time he was already known as the chemical genius.

In his youth he already showed great interest in the world of nature, concerns that were fed thanks to his time in the Boy Scouts. As part of this group, he received the Eagle Scout level, which was the highest recognition that could be obtained.

College life

Miller enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, to study chemistry. She completed her career and graduated in 1951 when she was only 21 years old. After that she joined the doctoral program offered at Berkeley.

He spent some time trying to figure out what topic he wanted to choose to focus his research on. During this process he met with a large number of professors until he made the decision to work with Edward Teller in the area of ​​theoretical physics. This union did not last long.

Soon after, Miller attended a lecture by Harold Urey, a renowned American chemist and university professor, who had also been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934.

At the conference, Urey presented his ideas on the origin of the solar system. He also spoke about the possibilities that existed for organic synthesis to occur in reducing environments, such as the atmosphere.

This encounter and these topics aroused curiosity in Miller, who joined Urey in 1952 to initiate some research work. Thus ended his relationship with Teller, who would also possibly move to Chicago at that time, where he worked on the hydrogen bomb.

He completed a training program at the California State Institute of Technology. After completing her studies and academic preparation, she joined the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University as a member. Already in 1958 he became a professor of chemistry, but at the University of California, San Diego.

Death

Stanley Miller died on May 20, 2007 while living in a nursing home in National City, a place south of San Diego. The American chemist had already suffered a series of cerebrovascular accidents since 1999 that considerably reduced his physical abilities.

His death, at age 77, was the result of a heart attack. Although many applied for it, he never received the Nobel Prize for his studies or experiments.

Theory

When Stanley Miller, still a student, approached Nobel Prize winner Harold Urey, he did so with the idea of ​​working together. His proposal was to carry out experiments with organic compounds.

At that time Miller proposed that the most relevant organic compounds in the origin of life were formed without counting on biological conditions on the early Earth.

Experiments

Stanley Miller decided in 1953 to test how viable the Russian chemist Aleksandr Oparin's hypothesis was. For this he had the help of his mentor, the chemist Harold Urey. Together they worked to see if the primordial soup (metaphor for the origin of life) was capable of producing some simple biochemical product.

Urey was initially not very convinced of Miller's line of work. The university professor wanted his graduate student to focus on other topics, such as thallium in meteorites.

Miller's idea prevailed and together they carried out what would later be called the Miller-Urey experiment. The objective was to discover an experiment that would allow the formation of proteins that had existed in times past.

In the experiment, gas mixtures were used. These gases were made up of ammonia, methane, hydrogen, and water vapor. For Miller these were elements that most likely had been present in the primordial atmosphere.

The interaction of the gases did not elicit any response naturally. So Miller decided to use an energy that was capable of generating the response, so he resorted to an electric shock.

The procedure was based on heating the mixture of gases named above to a temperature above 100ºC. To do this, he used an electric current. A week later, Miller analyzed the different substances that had appeared at the bottom of a cylindrical instrument known as a test tube.

In all, Miller got three amino acids from his experiments.

conclusion

Miller was able to show that the creation of amino acids occurred in a very simple way. This despite the fact that amino acids have a greater complexity than chemical elements.

As time went on, more labs joined in and ran simple experiments like the ones Miller did. More than 10 of the 20 amino acids found in life were produced.

Criticism of the experiments

Miller's experiment met with multiple criticisms. The most obvious had to do with the fact that amino acids were created by scientists and not naturally. Although other criticisms have to do with more technical aspects of the experiment.

The first complaint from Miller's detractors is that the experiment he conducted required an extreme amount of influence from the researcher. This external intervention invalidates the results according to many, since there was no natural production of the elements.

Another review focused on how Miller removed oxygen in his tests. This is especially relevant since oxygen is like a poison in the formation of amino acids and these could not be formed.

There is evidence to suggest that oxygen was present when life began more than four billion years ago. This would invalidate the experiment.

Removing the oxygen from his experiment was the factor that aroused the most criticism of Miller's work. Since it was also a fundamental element to protect organic molecules from the ultraviolet radiation of the ozone layer.

Finally, Miller's experiment created only a few amino acids and not the 20 that living things have. Other scientists managed to produce the remaining amino acids, but the spontaneity factor still failed, as there was always a lot of interference from researchers.

Other contributions

As time passed, Miller was able to synthesize more different types of amino acids, as well as improving his methods. It achieved the production of a large number of organic compounds and also inorganic compounds that were essential for metabolism and construction at the cellular level.

He was not only interested in the origin of life. The possibility that life existed on other planets, more specifically on Mars, was also questioned. He saw in amino acids an element that because of its ease could have been found on Mars.

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) even contributed to develop a system that could be used in a mission on Mars and that was capable of extracting and analyzing amino acids.

Stanley Miller's best known works had his focus on prebiotic chemistry. Although the truth is that it also contributed with great advances in terms of the compression of hydrates (which are also known as gas clathrates).

Recognitions

Miller was a prominent member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. He received different distinctions for his work, including the Oparin medal for his experiments and studies on the evolution and origin of life.

The American-born chemist earned much of his fame and recognition for his research on the usual chemical reactions on the primordial planet.

References

1. Campbell, N., Taylor, M., Simon, E., Dickey, J., Hogan, K., & Reece, J. (2007). Biology (7th ed.). Panamerican Medical.
2. Prothero, D. (2013). Bringing fossils to life - an introduction to paleobiology. New York: Columbia University Press.
3. Schopf, J. (1992). Major events in the history of life. Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
4. Tepedino, D. (2013). Theories about the great enigmas of humanity. Buenos Aires: Ed. Dunken.
5. Werner, C., & Werner, D. (2007). Evolution: the grand experiment. New Leaf Press.