The Genesis mission was originally named after Hans Suess and Harold Urey for their pioneering work in the field of cosmochemistry.

Hans E. Suess and Harold C. Urey

Hans E. Suess in 1947 proposed that the relative abundance of each chemical element in the solar system depends in a fairly regular way on the element's mass, and that this abundance pattern was caused by a combination of nuclear properties and the way heavy elements are created in stars. This idea was quite speculative, given the quality of data at that time, but new data have verified the essential correctness of Suess' intuition. In 1965 Wänke and Suess proposed that the previously inexplicable high concentrations of noble gases in gas-rich meteorites were due to implanted solar wind ions. This proposal was experimentally confirmed and is accepted without question today.

Harold C. Urey is the founder of planetary science as we know it today. His classic book, The Planets, published in 1952, discussed planetary objects (and meteorites) from the point of view of chemistry, physics, and materials as opposed to telescopic points of light. Urey's focus on planetary science evolved from an interest in isotopic effects in chemistry, beginning with the discovery of deuterium, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1933. After 1960 he focused his energies on the properties of meteorites, making important contributions well past his 80th birthday.

In 1956, Suess and Urey together published a seminal paper on the abundances of the elements based on meteorite data, combining Urey's knowledge of meteorite chemical data and Suess' ideas on how abundances should be interpreted. Although great liberties were taken with available abundance data, the peaks in the resulting abundance curves were the inspiration for the famous general theories of nucleosynthesis published by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler, and Hoyle in 1957. We intend to complete the work of Suess and Urey with this mission.