Scientist Who Sparked 'A Revolution in Chemistry' Dies at 70 (washingtonpost.com)

Ahmed Zewail pioneered a technique for using lasers to monitor chemical reactions, which the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said sparked "a revolution in chemistry and adjacent sciences." Slashdot reader Provocateur writes, "The Washington Post has the story...citing his prizewinning research in femtochemistry..."

Slashdot covered Zewail's Nobel prize in 1999, as well as his 2001 claim to have resolved Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. "Mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry were among the fields that gave me a special satisfaction..." he says in the Post's article, adding "for reasons unknown (to me), my mind kept asking 'how' and 'why.' "

Comments

Re:Muslim Scientist

[multi io]

Well, he was one of three muslim science nobel prize winners in history (the other two being Abdus Salam and Aziz Sancar). And there are 1.5 billion muslims. By contrast, jewish scientists have won over 100 nobel prizes, and there are only 15 million jews. I guess this means that a muslim is about 5,000 times less likely to become a renowned scientist than a jew is. So while muslim scientists aren't oxymorons, they're an exceedingly rare occurrence.

He had the right idea

[tomhath]

Dr. Zewail worked for years to raise money and generate political interest in creating a science-based university and research campus near Cairo...

“A part of the world that pioneered science and mathematics during Europe’s dark ages is now lost in a dark age of illiteracy and knowledge deficiency,” he wrote, adding that he wished the $1.5 billion in annual support that the United States gives to Egypt would accent “scientific and industrial cooperation” instead of going overwhelmingly toward the purchase of military equipment.

He managed to rise above the political problems in that region to try and make the world a better place.