From the Small-Town Chapel to the Cathedrals of Cosmopolitan Science: Harold C. Urey, Religion, and Isotope Chemistry

Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation

Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org

This talk will consider Urey’s religious upbringing in the Brethren Church and his lifelong struggle with religious ideas. Although Urey became an atheist early in life, his work as a public spokesman for science indicates that he carried many of these ideas (and perhaps a rural attitude toward morality and family life) into his later life and incorporated them into his understanding of science’s ideal role in public and political life. Because he participated in the great demographic shift of the 20th century from rural to urban life, a study of Urey’s life and career promises to illuminate the effects that this change in lifestyle, along with participation in more cosmopolitan scientific circles at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago, may have had on the development of the 20th-century “scientific conscience.” I argue that Urey’s biography is thus an opportunity to analyze, question, and refine the presumed secularization of American society and science during the 20th century.

Matthew Shindell is a Ph.D. candidate in the history of science and science studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently writing a dissertation concerning the life and career of the American physical chemist Harold C. Urey. This dissertation has received support from the National Science Foundation, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and the UCSD Science Studies Program.