Egyptian scientist wins Nobel Prize for chemistry
Egypt-International, Science, 10/12/1999

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced today that it has awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in chemistry to scientist Ahmed Zewail who holds dual citizenship in Egypt and the USA "for his pioneering investigation of fundamental chemical reactions, using ultra-short laser flashes, on the time scale on which the reactions actually occur."

"Professor Zewail's contributions have brought about a revolution in chemistry and adjacent sciences, since this type of investigation allows us to understand and predict important reactions," it said.

Zewail was born in Egypt in 1946, and he studied at the University of Alexandria in Egypt and at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, earning a doctorate in 1974. He has held the Linus Pauling Chair of Chemical Physics at the California Institute of Technology since 1990.

Zewail pioneered an area of science known as femtochemistry, using a high-speed camera utilizing flashes of lasers with an extremely short duration to see what actually happens to molecules and atoms during chemical reactions in the space of a femtosecond (0.000000000000001 of a second), from which the science takes its name.

"The contribution for which Zewail is to receive the Nobel Prize means that we have reached the end of the road: no chemical reactions take place faster than this." it said.

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