Professor Mustafa Amr El Sayed
King Faisal Prize in Science 1990 Laureate
Topic: "Chemistry "
Photosynthesis is one of the many gifts that God gave us here on earth
Mustafa Amr El-Sayed received his B.Sc. from Ain Shams University in Cairo in 1953 and a Ph.D. from Florida State University in 1959. After completing his doctorate degree, he held fellowships at Harvard and Yale Universities and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) before joining the University of California, Los Angeles (1961-1994), where he became a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. He was a Visiting Professor at the American University in Beirut and the University of Southern France. He is also currently a Member at Large, Vice-Chairman, and Chairman of the Physical Chemistry Division of the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry.
Professor El-Sayed is a leading nano-scientist and physical chemist, and also known for the spectroscopy rule named after him, the “El-Sayed Rule.” His group made seminal contributions to physical and material chemistry research, including the use of steady and ultra-fast laser spectroscopy to elucidate reaction kinetics and specificities in complex chemical systems relevant to life processes, such as energy conversion and transfer, photosynthesis, photochemistry, and physico-chemical cycles undergone by the bacteriorhodopsin. They also developed several new spectroscopic techniques and are currently focusing on studying the physical and chemical properties of noble metal nanoparticles and their applications in nanocatalysis, nanophotonic and nanomedicine. El-Sayed’s laboratory is known for developing the gold nanorod technology. He published more than 500 scientific papers and supervised the research of over 35 Ph.D. students, 26 postdoctoral fellows and 13 visiting professors.
He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the US Academy of Science, the Third World Academy of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, and the Advisory Committee for the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry and the International Reviews of Physical Chemistry.
This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.
- He held many positions including:
- Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA in 1994.
- Julius Brown Chair at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
- Director of the Laser Dynamics Laboratory at the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
- Editor of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006.
- Member of the USA National Medal of Science Committee in 2014.
- He received many awards and honors including:
- The Class of 1943 Distinguished Professor Award in 2007.
- US National Medal of Science in 2007.
- Ahmed Zewail Prize in Molecular Sciences in 2009.
- Inaugural Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2009.
- Doctorate of Humane Letters from the American University of Beirut in 2011.