NOBEL PRIZE FOR CHEMISTRY

October 12, 1999
		The 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Egyptian-born scientist Ahmed Zewail for his development of a technique that uses "the world's fastest camera" to observe atoms.

A Special Report on the 1999 Nobel Prizes Oct. 12, 1999: The Nobel Prize for Physics. Oct. 11, 1999: Dr. Günter Blobel wins the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Oct. 1, 1999: German author Günter Grass wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Science and Health   The Nobel Foundation The Nobel Foundation's announcement of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Dr. Zewail developed the technique of femtochemistry in 1980's, which uses ultra-short laser flashes to to watch how atoms move in a molecule during a chemical reaction. Using the technique, the movement of an atom can be observed to the point of a femtosecond, or 0.000000000000001 of a second. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the prize, compared femtochemistry to finally being able to use slow motion while watching a football, or soccer, match. "What would a football match on TV be without slow motion revealing afterwards the movements of the players and the ball when a goal is scored? Chemical reactions are a similar case," the Academy's announcement reads. "This years laureate in Chemistry, Ahmed H. Zewail, has studied atoms and molecules in slow motion during a reaction and seen what actually happens when chemical bonds break and new ones are created." The Academy described his technique as using "the world's fastest camera." Zewail used it to investigate why some chemical reactions take place but not others. "We have reached the end of the road: no chemical reactions take place faster than this," the announcement said. "Femtochemistry has fundamentally changed our view of chemical reactions. From a phenomenon described in relatively vague metaphors such as 'activation' and 'transition state', we can now see the movements of individual atoms as we imagine them. They are no longer invisible. " Egyptian-born Zewail is a professor of chemistry and physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. He said he went to bed early with a cold and was woken up by the phone call from Sweden. "I must tell you that after this 6 a.m. call this morning it seems like the virus is killed. I recommend the Nobel prize for anybody who has a cold," he said at a press conference. Zewail holds both Egyptian and American citizenship, and was recognized as Egypt's greatest living scientist and awarded an Order of Merit by President Hosni Mubarak in 1995. In 1998, the Egyptian postal service issued stamps with his picture. Dr. Zewail is now focusing on using the technology to control the outcome of a chemical reaction. "If we succeed in doing this in the coming years, that will alter the whole face of biological chemistry and pharmaceuticals and so on," he said.