Chem Dept. alum earns Nobel Prize

Ahmed Sewail, this year's winner, earned his Ph.D. from Penn in 1974. Ahmed Zewail, who received his doctoral degree in Chemistry from Penn in 1974 and has gone on to a distinguished career as a chemical physicist, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry yesterday. Zewail, currently a Chemical Physics and Physics professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., was recognized for his work in a field he pioneered known as femtochemistry, the use of high-speed cameras to monitor chemical reactions at a scale of femtoseconds, or units of one-quadrillionth of a second. Zewail, 53, showed that it is possible to see how molecules and atoms move during a chemical reaction by using his rapid laser techniques. The Nobel committee surprised him with a pre-dawn telephone call to his home in San Marino, Calif., where he was recuperating from a cold. ''The real excitement is, in fact, in the fundamental discovery itself -- the ability to observe and study the behavior of atoms," Zewail told the Associated Press. "Professor Zewail's contributions have brought about a revolution in chemistry and adjacent sciences, since this type of investigation allows us to understand and predict important reactions," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel prizes, said in its announcement. The Academy awarded the prize for experiments Zewail did in the mid-1980s, but his talent can be traced to his years as a doctoral candidate, said Penn Chemistry Professor Robin Hochstrasser, who was Zewail's advisor and mentor. Hochstrasser said he was not surprised Zewail was honored for his work and felt that the award was "very well deserved." "[Zewail was] always looking to do something new and get into unchartered territory," he said. "We're all very pleased that he's won this award." George Palladino, vice chairperson of Penn's Chemistry Department, added his excitement that a onetime Penn student had won the highest award in science. "We were elated that one of our alumni was so acknowledged for his work," Palladino said. Hochstrasser added that awarding the prize to a Penn alumnus "makes it very clear that we have wonderful students here" and that it shows people outside the University "what a wonderful [Chemistry] department we have here" at Penn. Zewail's Caltech colleagues applauded his efforts and said they were happy to hear his work was recognized. Caltech President David Baltimore said that having the honor awarded to one of Caltech's faculty adds to the university's upbeat atmosphere. "Being the No. 1 college in the country this year, according to U.S. News & World Report, and having the year's number one chemist makes it a really great time for Caltech," Baltimore said in a statement. Caltech Chemistry Professor John Baldeschwieler echoed that sentiment. "We're very pleased that we can attract people of his qualities and give them the facilities and the support that allows," he said. Other professors in the chemistry department expressed excitement for their colleague. "Obviously we're all very excited," Caltech Chemistry Professor Jesse Beauchamp said. "He's certainly the leader in the field." And Chemistry Professor Nathan Lewis added that "it's interesting that [the prize] wasn't shared" between several people, as in previous years. "[The committee saw that] one person can clearly change the direction in which chemists can view their world," Lewis noted. An Egyptian native, Zewail earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees from Alexandria University in Egypt. After earning his doctorate from Penn in 1974, he spent two years as an IBM Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley before joining the Caltech faculty in 1976. Zewail will receive the $960,000 prize in Stockholm, Sweden, on December 10. Daily Pennsylvanian staff writers Karlene Hanko and Aliya Sternstein contributed to this article.