Egyptian Noble Laureate Ahmed Zewail, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 70, will be honoured in Egypt through a military funeral, announced spokesperson Sherif Fouad.
Advertisement
Zewail, a naturalised USA citizen, won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1999 for his groundbreaking work in the study of chemical reactions in extremely short timescales.
No immediate cause of death was given.
A professor at the California Institute of Technology, he was a science advisor to President Obama and the first Arab scientist to win the Nobel Prize.
Zewail, a Muslim, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1999 after he broke the ground on efforts to use laser to observe chemical reactions in real time.
Up to his death Zewail worked at the California Institute of Technology.
He later moved to the United States and earned his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
He is also credited with developing a new research field dubbed four-dimensional electron microscopy, which helps capture fleeting processes and turn them into a kind of digital film.
Zewail, who was born in Damanhur, Egypt, joined Caltech in 1976. “My mother said I was going to burn the house (with chemistry experiments)”.
Although he has American citizenship, Zewail’s greatest passion was for Egypt, where he hoped to be buried.
In 2014, he published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times urging the USA government to remain constructively engaged with Egypt, rather than threatening to cut off US aid after the military.
“Egypt has today lost one of its faithful sons and a brilliant scholar” who devoted his life to scientific research, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said in the statement.
The Egyptian Nobel laureate leaves behind his wife and four children. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
Advertisement
Be Civil – It’s OK to have a difference in opinion but there’s no need to be a jerk.
