(b. February 26 1946)
Ahmed Hassan Zewail (born in Damanhur, Egypt) is an Egyptian American chemist, and the winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry.
Born in Damanhur (60 km south-east of Alexandria) and raised in Disuq, he received his first degree from the University of Alexandria before moving from Egypt to the United States to complete his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. After some post doctorate work at the University of California, Berkeley, he was awarded a faculty appointment at Caltech in 1976, where he has remained ever since. He was made the first Linus Pauling Chair in Chemical Physics in 1990.
Zewail's key work has been as the pioneer of femtochemistry—i.e. the study of chemical reactions across femtoseconds. Using a rapid ultrafast laser technique (consisting of ultrashort laser flashes), the technique allows the description of reactions on very short time scales - short enough to analyze transition states in selected chemical reactions.
In 1999, Zewail became the third ethnic Egyptian to receive the Nobel Prize, following Anwar Sadat (1978 in Peace) and Naguib Mahfouz (1988 in Literature).
Other international awards include the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1993) and the Robert A. Welch Award (1997). In 1999, he received Egypt's highest state honor, the Grand Collar of the Nile.
Cambridge University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Science in 2006.
Egypt State Information Service
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