The Origin of Organic Life--An experiment by Stanley Miller 1953

In 1828, Friedrich Wohler a German chemist who had studied with Berzelius, attempted to make an inorganic salt, ammonium cyanate, by mixing solutions of ammonium (NH4+) and cyanate (CNO-) ions. Wohler was astonished to find that instead of the expected product, he had made urea, an organic compound present in the urine of animals. Wolher challenged the then popular vitalists when he wrote, "I must tell you that I can prepare urea without requiring a kidney or an animal, either man or dog." However, one of the ingredients used in the synthesis, the cyanate, had been extracted from animal blood, and the vitalists were not swayed by Wohler's discovery A few years later, Hermann Kolbe, a student of Wohler's, made the organic compound acetic acid from inorganic substances that could themselves be prepared directly from pure elements. Decades of laboratory synthesis produced increasingly complex organic compounds.
In 1953, Stanley Miller, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, helped place this abiotic (nonliving) synthesis of organic compounds into the context of evolution. Miller used a laboratory simulation of chemical conditions on the primitive Earth to demonstrate that the spontaneous synthesis of organic compounds may have been an early stage in the origin of life.

Abiotic synthesis of organic compounds under "early Earth" conditions. Stanley Miller recreates his 1953 experiment, a laboratory simulation demonstrating that environmental conditions on the lifeless, primordial Earth favored the synthesis of some organic molecules. Miller used electrical discharges (simulated lightning) to trigger reactions in a primitive "atmosphere" of H2O, H2, NH3 (ammonia), and CH4 (methane)-some of the gases that are belched into the air by volcanoes. From these ingredients Miller's apparatus made a variety of organic compounds that play key roles in living cells. Similar chemistry may have set the stage for the origin of life on Earth.