Ahmed Zewail

Ahmed Hassan Zewail (26 February 1946 – 2 August 2016) was an Egyptian-American chemist, born in Damanhur, Egypt, who died in Pasadena, California. He founded the new field of femtochemistry and was known as the "father of femtochemistry"; he received the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alone "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy" — the first Egyptian and Arab to win a Nobel Prize in a scientific field, and the first African to win it in Chemistry. ^{1 2}

Zewail was born in Damanhur on 26 February 1946; his family moved to Desouk when he was four and he was raised there, while the Nobel Prize facts page records that he grew up in Alexandria. He studied at the University of Alexandria, taking his bachelor's degree with honours in 1967 and a master's degree in light science (optics), and worked at the university as a demonstrator. ^{1 2 3}

He moved to the United States and completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania under Robin M. Hochstrasser. Sources differ on the exact year: the English Wikipedia infobox dates his thesis to 1975, while other sources give 1973 or 1974, so the museum records the range rather than settling it. He then held a postdoctoral position at the University of California, Berkeley, under Charles B. Harris in 1974–1976. ^{1 3}

Zewail joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1976 and remained there for the rest of his life. He was naturalised as a US citizen on 5 March 1982, became the first Linus Pauling Chair of Chemical Physics in 1990, and directed the Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology. ^{1 2}

In the late 1980s he pioneered femtosecond laser pump–probe spectroscopy, which for the first time allowed scientists to film atoms in motion during a chemical reaction and observe transition states as they formed — founding femtochemistry. He later developed four-dimensional electron microscopy for imaging ultrafast structural change. ¹

He published more than 700 scientific papers and fourteen books. He served on President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and was among the first US science envoys to the Muslim world, travelling to the Middle East as a science envoy from 2009. ¹

His defining achievement was the creation of femtochemistry, for which he received the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alone (share 1/1). His honours include the King Faisal International Prize for Science (1989), the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1993), the Grand Collar of the Order of the Nile (1999), fellowship of the Royal Society (2001), the Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2006), the Othmer Gold Medal (2009), and the Priestley Medal and the Davy Medal (2011), together with more than thirty honorary degrees. ^{2 1}

In Egypt he founded the Zewail City of Science and Technology, a research and education institution announced in 2000 and revived in 2011, toward which he donated his Nobel Prize money. ¹

Robin M. Hochstrasser supervised his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania and Charles B. Harris mentored his postdoctoral work at Berkeley; at Caltech his chair carried the name of Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel laureate in chemistry. The museum does not yet hold separate records for these people, so they are named here in the text without links; his ties to his birthplace and the city of his upbringing are recorded as relations in the record's data. ^{1 2}

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

After the January 2011 protests began in Egypt, Zewail returned to his home country, joined a committee proposing constitutional reforms and acted as an intermediary in a turbulent period. Media speculation about a presidential candidacy followed him, and he repeatedly denied such ambitions, saying he only wanted to serve Egypt in the field of science and to die as a scientist. ¹

His autobiography, Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize (World Scientific, 2002), appeared in seventeen languages and editions; in it he traces his upbringing in Desouk and Alexandria, his path to the Nobel Prize, and his views on science and on building research capacity in the developing world. ^{4 1}

Zewail married twice: first Mervat in 1967, with whom he had two daughters, Maha and Amani, before they separated in 1979; and second Dema Faham, a Syrian, in 1989, with whom he had two sons, Nabeel and Hani. This museum does not publish family details beyond what is needed to understand his work. ¹

Ahmed Zewail died in Pasadena, California, on 2 August 2016, aged seventy; no exact cause was made public, and he had been recovering from cancer in his final years. A military funeral was held for him in Cairo on 7 August 2016 at the El-Mosheer Tantawy Mosque, attended by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, with funeral prayers led by the former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa; he was buried in the family tomb in 6th of October City. His name remains attached to femtochemistry, to the Zewail City of Science and Technology, and to his standing as the first Arab Nobel laureate in the sciences. ^{1 3}

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