Ahmed H. Zewail

 Born on February 26, 1946 in Damanhur, Alexandria, Egypt.  He was the only son in a family of three sisters and two loving parents.  Fascinated by how science and technology worked, and in an attempt to produce wood gas, he nearly set his bedroom aflame.  On another occasion, the young Zewail decided to take his uncle’s car out for a spin. He’d never had a driving lesson, but he’d learned how a car operated—in theory.

 Zewail’s inclinations were toward the physical sciences.  Zewail studied chemistry at the University of Alexandria.  He scored excellent in Chemistry and was chosen for a group of seven students (called “special chemistry”), an elite science group.  In 1967, he graduated with the highest honors – “Distinction with First Class Honor” – with above 90% in all areas of chemistry.  On the research side, he finished the requirements for a Masters in Science in about eight months, his subject was spectroscopy.

 In 1969, he went to America and pursued his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.  In 1973, the research for his Ph.D. and the requirements for a degree were essentially completed.  Early in 1974, he moved west to the University of California at Berkeley, excited by the new opportunities.  In 1976, he joined at Caltech (California Institute of Technology), arriving with a raft of published scholarly papers in chemistry and physics to his credit.

 A femtosecond is an excruciatingly short period of time.  One femtosecond is one millionth of one billionth of a second.  The fraction is written as in scientific notation.  The word comes from the Swedish word femton, “fifteen”.

 Molecules, like everything in nature, seek the lowest possible energy state.  Zewail showed that when excited by a laser pulse for a few femtoseconds, the molecule goes through a two-stage transition, center, in which two of the four carbon atoms break apart, while the other two remain bonded.  By showing the properties of the transition state—by opening chemical transition states to observation and thus prediction and perhaps manipulation—Zewail created “femtochemistry.”

 Using his laser technique, Zewail was the first person to find out how long it takes for atoms and molecules to form and to break chemical bonds.  The 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Ahmed Zewail "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy".  Zewail developed what many have described as the world's fastest camera.

 To develop the field of 4D electron microscopy for the direct visualization of materials and biological behavior.  In the four dimensions of space and time, both the structure and dynamics of nanomachines can be imaged, and the applications range from atoms to cells.

 In March of 1989, he went to receive the award from Saudi Arabia, and there he met Dema.  They met in March, got engaged in July and married in September, all of the same year,  Dema has her M.D. from Damascus University, and completed a Master's degree in Public Health at UCLA.  They have two young sons, Nabeel and Hani, and two daughters, Maha, a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas, and Amani, a junior at Berkeley.

 Some 500 articles (authored and co-authored) have been published in the fields of science, education, and world affairs.  Dr. Zewail has many scientific books in the field of physical chemistry, some of his books are:

 Luminescent Solar Energy Concentrator Devices. A. H. Zewail and J. S. Batchelder, California Institute of Technology U.S. Pat. 4,227,939, October 14, 1980  Method and System for Ultrafast Photoelectron Microscope. A. H. Zewail and V. A. Lobastov, California Institute of Technology U.S. Pat. 7,154,091, December 26, 2006

 Director, Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science & Technology, Caltech (2005-)  Director, NSF Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Caltech ( )  Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics, Caltech (1995-)  President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2009-)  United States First Science Envoy (2009-)

 PhD Honoris Causa in Humane Letters from Southwestern University  Honorary PhD in arts and sciences by the University of Jordan  PhD Honoris Causa from Complutense University in Madrid  Honorary Doctorate in Science by Cambridge University  PhD Honoris Causa by Lund University in Sweden  member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

“ after years of researching the dynamics of chemical bonds, I look forward to helping forge new bonds among nations. ” --A.H. Zewail (scientist-diplomat)