Ahmed Zewail

Early life and education Ahmed Hassan Zewail was born on February 26, 1946, in Damanhur, Egypt, and was raised in Desouk. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry from Alexandria University before moving to the United States to complete his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Robin M. Hochstrasser.

Career After completing his PhD, Zewail did postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, supervised by Charles B. Harris. Zewail was the director of the Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology at the California Institute of Technology. Zewail with his colleagues at the Zewail City of Science, Technology and Innovation in 2012Zewail was nominated and participated in President Barack Obama's Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), an advisory group of the nation's leading scientists and engineers to advise the President and Vice President and formulate policy in the areas of science, technology, and innovation.

Research Zewail's key work was a pioneer of femtochemistry —i.e. the study of chemical reactions on a femtosecond timescale. 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 analyse transition states in selected chemical reactions. alt=Ahmed_Zewail_1986 Zewail became known as the "father of femtochemistry". He also made critical contributions in ultrafast electron diffraction, which uses short electron pulses rather than light pulses to study chemical reaction dynamics.

Political work In a speech at Cairo University on June 4, 2009, US President Barack Obama proclaimed a new Science Envoy program as part of a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." In January 2010, Ahmed Zewail, Elias Zerhouni, and Bruce Alberts became the first US science envoys to the Muslim world, visiting Muslim-majority countries from North Africa to Southeast Asia. alt=Ahmed_Zewail_(2010) Zewail in 2010When asked about rumors that he might contest the 2012 Egyptian presidential election, Ahmed Zewail said: "I am a frank man... I have no political ambition, as I have stressed repeatedly that I only want to serve Egypt in the field of science and die as a scientist."

During the 2011 Egyptian protests he announced his return to the country. Zewail said that he would join a committee for constitutional reform alongside Ayman Nour, Mubarak's rival at the 2005 presidential elections and a leading lawyer. Zewail was later mentioned as a respected figure working as an intermediary between the military regime ruling after Mubarak's resignation, and revolutionary youth groups such as the April 6 Youth Movement and young supporters of Mohamed ElBaradei. He played a critical role during this time as described by Egyptian Media.

Awards and honours Zewail's work brought him international attention, receiving awards and honors throughout most of his career for his work in chemistry and physics. In 1999, Zewail became the first Egyptian to receive a science Nobel Prize when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

In 1999, he received Egypt's highest state honour, the Grand Collar of the Nile. In October 2006, Zewail received the Albert Einstein World Award of Science for "his pioneering development of the new field of femtoscience and for his seminal contributions to the revolutionary discipline of physical biology, creating new ways for better understanding the functional behavior of biological systems by directly visualizing them in the four dimensions of space and time." Zewail was awarded the Othmer Gold Medal (2009), the Priestley Medal (2011) from the American Chemical Society and the Davy Medal (2011) from the Royal Society.

In 1982 he was named as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Zewail became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1989, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993, and the American Philosophical Society in 1998. Zewail was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2001. He was also elected as a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences in 2001.

Zewail was made a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2010 the journal Chemical Physics Letters established the Ahmed Zewail Prize in Molecular Sciences. In May 2010, Zewail gave the commencement address at Southwestern University. The Zewail City of Science and Technology, established in 2000 and revived in 2011, is named in his honour. Heriot-Watt University, Scotland (2002); Complutense University of Madrid, Spain (2008); University of Jordan, Jordan (2009); University of Glasgow, Scotland (2011); Yale University, US (2014).

Egyptian national honours

Grand Cross of the Order of Merit (Egypt) (1995) Grand Cordon of the Order of the Arab Republic of Egypt (1998) Grand Collar of the Order of the Nile (1999)

Foreign honours

Knight of the Legion of Honour Officier of the National Order of Merit

Grand Cordon of the National Order of the Cedar

Grand Officer of the Order of the Two Niles

Commander of the Order of the Republic

Grand Officer of Order of Zayed

Personal life Zewail and his first wife, Mervat, were married in 1967, just before leaving Egypt to attend the University of Pennsylvania for his PhD. He had two daughters with Mervat, Maha and Amani. Mervat and Ahmed however, separated in 1979.

Zewail married Dema Faham, a Syrian, in 1989. Zewail and Faham had two sons, Nabeel and Hani.

Death and funeral Zewail died aged 70 on the morning of August 2, 2016. He was recovering from cancer, however, the exact cause of his death is unknown. Zewail returned to Egypt, but only his body was received at Cairo Airport.

Publications

Scientific Advances in Laser Spectroscopy I, ed. A. H. Zewail, SPIE, Bellingham, 1977 Advances in Laser Chemistry, ed. A. H. Zewail, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg, 1978 Photochemistry and Photobiology, Vols. 1 and 2, ed. A. H. Zewail, Harwood Academic, London, 1983 Ultrafast Phenomena VII, eds. C. B. Harris, E. P. Ippen, G. A. Mourou and A. H. Zewail, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg, 1990 The Chemical Bond: Structure and Dynamics, ed. A. H. Zewail, Academic Press, Boston, 1992 Ultrafast Phenomena VIII, eds. J.-L. Martin, A. Migus, G. A. Mourou, and A. H. Zewail, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg, 1993 Ultrafast Phenomena IX, eds. P. F. Barbara, W. H. Knox, G. A. Mourou, and A. H. Zewail, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg, 1994 Femtochemistry: Ultrafast Dynamics of the Chemical Bond Vol. I, A. H. Zewail, World Scientific, 1994 Femtochemistry: Ultrafast Dynamics of the Chemical Bond Vol. II, A. H. Zewail, World Scientific, 1994 Physical Biology: From Atoms to Medicine, ed. A. H. Zewail, Imperial College Press, London, 2008 4D Electron Microscopy, ed. A. H. Zewail, Imperial College Press, London, 2009 International Advisory Board for Encyclopedia of Analytical Chemistry (1999–2014) 4D Visualization of Matter: Recent Collected Works of Ahmed H Zewail, Nobel Laureate, Imperial College Press, London, 2014

Biographical Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize, Ahmed H Zewail, World Scientific, 2002 Age of Science (2005, autobiography in Arabic)

Remembering Ahmed H. Zewail