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Al-Ahram Weekly 14 - 20 October 1999 Issue No. 451 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 14 - 20 October 1999 Issue No. 451
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters 
Chemical attractions
Egyptian-born scientist Ahmed Zewail of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) won the Nobel Prize for chemistry on Tuesday for work demonstrating that a rapid laser technique can observe the motion of atoms in a molecule during a chemical reaction.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said he was being honoured for a revolution in chemistry through "his pioneering investigation of fundamental chemical reactions... on the time scale on which the reactions actually occur."
Zewail's technique uses what may be described as the world's fastest camera -- a device that provides a laser flash measured in femtoseconds, or a staggering one millionth of a billionth of a second.
"Scientists the world over are studying processes with femtosecond spectroscopy in gases and in solids, on surfaced and in polymers," the award statement said. "Applications range from how catalysts function and how molecular electronic components must be designed, to the most delicate mechanisms in life processes and how the medicines of the future should be produced."
The prize, worth $960,000, will be awarded in Stockholm on 10 December by King Carl Gustav XVI on the 103rd anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor who set up the foundation.
Zewail, 53, went to bed in Pasadena with a cold on Monday but said the morning call from Sweden on Tuesday informing him he had won the prize left him cured.
"I must tell you that after this call, it seems like the virus is killed. I recommend the Nobel Prize for anybody who has a cold," he joked at a news conference at Caltech in Pasadena.
Zewail became the first Egyptian to win a Nobel since 1988 and the first ever to win one of the prestigious science prizes. He holds both Egyptian and American citizenship. He is married to Dema Zewail, a public health physician and they have four children.
When he got the early morning call, he said, "I was just frozen in time... I couldn't believe it. Then I kissed my wife and my kids. That's what I did."
He told reporters that his work and that of his colleagues at Caltech had made it possible to watch and study the motions of atoms in real time in the course of a chemical or biological change. "And by so doing, you are able to see the motions of these atoms, to try to understand their behaviour and hopefully, in the future, to control the outcome of the reactivity," he said.
Zewail said that for him the real excitement lay in the fundamental study. "But of course you can dream about the idea of being able to use a laser to control the outcome of a chemical reaction. If we succeed in doing this in the coming years, that will alter the whole face of biological chemistry and pharmaceuticals and so on."
Recognised as Egypt's greatest living scientist, Zewail was awarded the order of merit by President Hosni Mubarak in 1995 and in 1998 the Egyptian postal service issued stamps with his portrait on them.
He is the first Egyptian Nobel laureate since Naguib Mahfouz, who won the literature prize in 1988, and assassinated President Anwar El-Sadat, who shared the peace prize in 1978.
Before moving to the US Zewail studied at Alexandria University, where he received bachelor's and master's degrees. He later travelled to the US and earned a doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania before going to the University of California at Berkeley as an IBM research fellow. He was appointed in 1976 to the faculty at Caltech where he and his team developed femtochemistry.
In a telephone interview with Al-Ahram, Zewail said he was happy to be "the first Egyptian-Arab scientist to win this award" and hoped it would be a "harbinger for research in Egypt and the Arab world."
He said he was "dedicating this award to Egypt which occupies our hearts, and to its people who are worthy of all our efforts and sacrifices. I will never forget what Egypt did for me," he added.
President Mubarak told Zewail in a cable: "I am pleased to congratulate one of Egypt's sons for winning the Nobel award and making Egypt, for the second time, a pioneer in the international arena."
The Swedish Academy, in describing his work, compared it to watching soccer in slow motion. "What would a football match on TV be without slow motion revealing afterward the movement of the players and the ball when a goal is scored? Chemical reactions are a similar case," the academy said.
