Mostafa El-Sayed

Mostafa Amr El-Sayed (born 8 May 1933) is an Egyptian-American physical chemist, among the leading spectroscopists and nanoscientists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; a fundamental rule of spectroscopy bears his name — the El-Sayed rule. ^{1 2}

He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1980, received the US National Medal of Science in 2007 and the Priestley Medal, the American Chemical Society's highest honour, in 2016. He taught at the University of California, Los Angeles (1961–1994) and then at the Georgia Institute of Technology until his full retirement in 2020. ^{1 2}

English Wikipedia and Wikidata state that he was born in Zifta in Gharbia Governorate and spent his early life in Cairo, while the Arabic article states that he was born in Abu Kabir in Sharqia Governorate, the youngest son of a mathematics teacher; the disagreement is recorded here as it stands, without choosing between them. ^{1 3 4}

He took his B.Sc. in chemistry at Ain Shams University's Faculty of Science in 1953, first in his class, and worked there as a demonstrator. The Arabic article recounts how the Higher Teachers' Academy became the Faculty of Science under Taha Hussein, and how a small advertisement in al-Ahram led him to a scholarship in Florida; he travelled to the United States in 1954. ^{1 3}

He earned his doctorate at Florida State University under Michael Kasha, himself the last student of the celebrated G. N. Lewis. In graduate school he met Janice Jones, his wife of 48 years. ¹

He held postdoctoral posts at Harvard, Yale and the California Institute of Technology before joining the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles in 1961, where he remained until 1994. He then moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology as Julius Brown Chair and Regents Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, leading its Laser Dynamics Laboratory until his full retirement in 2020. ^{1 2}

He was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry from 1980 to 2004, and US editor of International Reviews in Physical Chemistry. ¹

In the 1960s he formulated the El-Sayed rule in photochemistry: intersystem crossing proceeds rapidly when the transition involves a change of molecular orbital type. The rule entered photochemistry textbooks and the IUPAC Gold Book. ¹

His research spans laser spectroscopy, steady-state and ultrafast; energy relaxation, transport and conversion in molecules, solids and photosynthetic systems; semiconductor quantum dots and metal nanostructures; magnetophotonic selection, picosecond Raman spectroscopy and phosphorescence microwave double resonance; gold nanorod technology; and applications of noble-metal nanoparticles in nanocatalysis, nanophotonics and nanomedicine. The English article puts his output at more than 1,200 refereed publications and more than 130,000 citations (as of 2021). ^{1 2}

His son Ivan El-Sayed (the Arabic article calls him Ayman), professor of head-and-neck surgical oncology at UCLA, worked with him on applying gold nanoparticles to cancer cells in animal and microscope experiments. The method has not been tested in humans: human use requires FDA clearance on the fate of the gold particles in the body. The Arabic article adds that his wife's death from breast cancer, about five years after her diagnosis, motivated this line of research. ^{1 3}

His honours include election to the US National Academy of Sciences (1980), the Tolman Award (1989), the King Faisal International Prize in Science (1990), the Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics (2002), and the US National Medal of Science (2007), whose citation honours him "for his seminal and creative contributions to our understanding of the electronic and optical properties of nanomaterials and to their applications in nanocatalysis and nanomedicine, for his humanitarian efforts of exchange among countries and for his role in developing the scientific leadership of tomorrow"; the Arabic article dates President George W. Bush's presentation of the medal at the White House to 29 September 2008. ^{1 3}

He also received the Ahmed Zewail Prize in Molecular Sciences (2009), was ranked 17th in Thomson Reuters' Top Chemists of the Past Decade (2011), and received the Priestley Medal (2016). He was a Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at Caltech and an Alexander von Humboldt Senior US Scientist Award holder; the Arabic article records Egypt's Order of the Republic, First Class (28 January 2009) and honorary doctorates from Mansoura and Beni Suef universities, and the English article an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University. He is a fellow or member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Third World Academy of Sciences. ^{1 3 2}

This section reports positions carried by the sources; they are not the museum's verdict.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences profile presents him through his research on the properties of plasmonic gold and silver nanoparticles, their coupling, and their applications in nanocatalysis and nanomedicine — the picture of him held by the American scientific community. ²

The sources record that the gold-nanoparticle cancer work has not gone beyond animal and microscope experiments and that any move to humans awaits regulatory clearance not yet completed, so his medical work is presented as promising laboratory research, not an established treatment. ¹

Wikidata records his citizenship as Egyptian and American. He married Janice Jones, whom he met in graduate school; his son is the surgical oncologist Ivan El-Sayed. ^{4 1}

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article need periodic review with clear update dates.