Stanley L. Miller, an emeritus professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, whose laboratory experiments in 1952 demonstrated how simple organic compounds considered necessary for the origin of life could have been synthesized on the Earth, died on 20 May. He was 77. Miller came to ICTP twice, in 2000 and 2003, as a guest speaker in the conferences on the origin of life. The conference in 2003 included a celebration on the 50th anniversary of Miller’s experiment at the University of Chicago that confirmed life could indeed be created by chemical synthesis.