Professor Ahmed H. Zewail
King Faisal Prize in Science 1989 Laureate
Topic: "Physics "
Molecules are in our body, in our air, and in our food; they are the foundation of all life, of all matter
Ahmed Hassan Zewail received his bachelor’s degree in 1967, and an M.Sc. degree in 1969 from the University of Alexandria, prior to traveling to the USA, where he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974, followed by postdoctoral work at the University of California in Berkeley. Zewail pursued a remarkable successful career from the time of his graduation, until his appointment as the Linus Pauling Chair of Chemistry and a Professor of Physics.
Professor Zewail is the world’s pioneer in introducing and developing the technique known as ultra-fast laser molecular beam spectroscopy. This has opened the field of real-time (femtosecond) molecular dynamics with sub-Angstrom resolution. His brilliant work unraveled some of the mysteries of molecules and made it possible to observe and study their motion in a femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second or 10 -15 of a second), thereby enabling scientists for the first time to record the instant of a molecule’s creation. In addition to inventing the new field of femto science, Professor Zewail also founded the Center of Physical Biology at Caltech with the aim of deciphering the fundamental physics of chemical and biological behavior. Over the past few years, Professor Zewail and his group made seminal contributions to this new field, creating novel ways for better understanding the functional behavior of biological systems by directly visualizing them in the four dimensions of space.
Professor Zewail’s astounding scholarship earned him numerous honors; he was awarded several international prizes and medals, honorary doctorate degrees from ivy league universities, fellowships of major scientific academies and societies worldwide, visiting professorships, editorships and hundreds of invited lectureships. He published hundreds of scientific papers, and several books on the applications of lasers. He also supervised a large number of graduate and postdoctoral students and presented more than 300 named Plenary and keynote lectures.
This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.
- He held many positions including:
- Director of the National Science Foundation’s Laboratory for Molecular Sciences in 1996.
- Distinguished Chair of Science & Technology Policy at the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan in 2003.
- Member of the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in 2009.
- He received many awards and honors including:
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999.
- Grand Collar of the Nile in 1999.
- Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 2006.
- Honorary degree from Yale University in 2014.
- He published Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize (American University in Cairo Press), (2003).
- Professor Ahmed Zewail passed away in Pasadena, California on 2/8/2016