Ahmed Zewail: Ultra-Scientist and Citizen

Abstract

To my regret, I met Ahmed Zewail in person only a few times. We first met in Spring 1976, when he arrived at Caltech, newly appointed as an assistant professor. I was visiting that semester, on sabbatical leave from Harvard. Ahmed impressed me as very bright, cheerful, and witty, brimming with ideas and zest. About a decade later, although we had not met again, I was intrigued by his innovative papers. Particularly instructive was his exposition of the role of coherence in laser spectroscopy.

Ahmed Hassan Zewail. 26 February 1946—2 August 2016

“…Anyone who is confused about this problem should consult the lucid one-page article that Zewail published in Nature in 2001 entitled 'The fog that was not ' (14), which the Harvard chemist and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, D. R. Herschbach, has described as 'lyrical' (Herschbach 2018).…”

“…By August 1986, Zewail was equipped in his laboratory (designated Femtoland) with the finest available ultrafast (femtosecond) lasers, which had been initiated by Shank and colleagues at Bell Laboratories (Fork et al 1981). By that time, R. B. Bernstein (of UCLA), an authority on stereochemical aspects of chemical dynamics, had become 'a devoted apostle' of Ahmed Zewail (Herschbach 2018). These two pioneers published a fine overview of the evolution and prospects of femtochemistry in 1988 ( 9), which concluded with the prophetic note: 'This happy marriage of ultrafast lasers and chemistry promises an exciting future for the field of real-time molecular reaction dynamics.'…”

“…Professor Dudley Herschbach of Harvard has described how, in November 1992, Ahmed visited Cambridge, Massachusetts, to deliver a joint Harvard-MIT physical chemistry seminar (Herschbach 2018): 'As well as giving a scintillating talk on femtochemistry, he romped through visits with faculty, students and postdocs.' Throughout his two-day visit 'Ahmed was delightfully vivacious, both in describing his work and asking many searching questions'.…”

“…Throughout his two-day visit 'Ahmed was delightfully vivacious, both in describing his work and asking many searching questions'. In May 2001, Zewail gave the Kistiakowsky Lecture at Harvard and, according to Herschbach (2018), it was a 'wonderfest'. 'He described advances and prospects for femtobiology involving electron transfer in DNA and proteins, ultrafast electron diffraction and laserinduced control of reaction pathways.'…”