Ministry of Higher ‫وزارة التعليم العالي والبحث العلمي‬

Education
‫جامعة المثنى‬
and Scientific Research
Al-Muthanna University ‫كلية الهندسة‬
College of Engineering ‫قسم الهندسة الكيمياوية‬
Chemical Engineering
Department

Report for the final exam/first semester of the academic year

2019/2020 for English Language Module/ 4th Year

(Title of the report)

Prepared by:

Name of the student

Submitted to:
Salwan Alturki

September 2020
INTRODUCTION
Ahmed Hassan Zewail (Arabic: ‫ )أحمد حسن زويل‬February 26, 1946 – August 2,
2016) was an Egyptian chemist, known as the "father of femtochemistry". He
was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on
femtochemistry and became the first Egyptian to win a Nobel Prize in a
scientific field. He was the Linus Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry,
Professor of Physics, and the director of the Physical Biology Center for
Ultrafast Science and Technology at the California Institute of Technology.
Chemical reactions in which molecules held together by atoms meet and
reorganize into new compounds are one of nature's most fundamental processes.
This transition from one constellation to another happens very quickly. The
process is possible because the atoms inside a molecule vibrate. The time
between these vibrations is very short - 10-100 femtoseconds. In the late 1980s
Ahmed Zewail developed methods for studying chemical reactions in detail. By
using laser technology to produce flashes of light just a few femtoseconds long,
reactions can be mapped.
►Personal Life
Zewail married Dema Faham in 1989. He had four children: two daughters,
Maha and Amani, from his first marriage, and with Faham two sons, Nabeel and
Hani.
►Early life and education
Ahmed Hassan Zewail was born on February 26, 1946, in Damanhur, Egypt,
and was raised in Desouk. He received a Bachelor of Science and Master of
Science degrees in Chemistry from Alexandria University before moving to the
United States to complete his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania supervised
by Robin M. Hochstrasser.

►University of Pennsylvania and Berkeley, California

Zewail's research supervisor at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
was Professor Robin Hochstrasser, an impressive and versatile physical chemist
(who had graduated at Heriot-Watt University). Hochstrasser had worked as a
staff member at the University of British Columbia before going to ‘Penn’,
where he was a leading light in the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of
Matter (LRSM). Zewail was greatly influenced by him as a supervisor, and also
by many of those who presented graduate lecture courses there, especially J. R.
Schrieffer, who gave excellent lectures on quantum mechanics. In his time with
Hochstrasser, Zewail published 10 worthy papers on topics such as the Stark
effect of simple molecules, the Zeeman effect in solids such as the nitrite ion
and benzene, the optical detection of magnetic resonance (ODMR), and double
resonance techniques.
In early 1974, Zewail began his postdoctoral work in the College of Chemistry,
University of California at Berkeley, in the group of Charles B. Harris. This was
a significant turning point in his career, for it was while working with Harris
that the importance of the concept of coherence occurred to him. He and Harris
published several papers on coherence in electronically excited dimers (1–4).
Charles Harris greatly influenced Zewail's early career. They jointly wrote
theoretical and experimental papers, and Harris identified him as being worthy
of a prestigious IBM Fellowship, which was a stepping stone to an academic
post in a premier university. In due course, Zewail was offered assistant
professorships at Harvard, Caltech, Chicago, Rice and Northwestern
universities.
At that time Harry Gray (ForMemRS 2000) was chair of the Division of
Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Staffing Committee at the California
Institute of Technology. Gray (2018) recalls: ‘I was impressed with the graduate
work he had done at Penn with Robin Hochstrasser as well as his postdoc
research with Charles Harris … I invited Ahmed to Caltech for an interview. His
talk was terrific, maybe a little too good, as some of the more conservative
faculty members were not convinced he was for real … We made him an offer.
Ahmed accepted and he moved to Caltech in 1976. …Within a few months
Ahmed was running a talented and dedicated research group, designing and
constructing instruments for investigations of the earliest events in chemical
reactions’.
►Addendum, January 2006
After the awarding of the Nobel Prize in 1999, He continued to serve as a
faculty member at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as the Linus
Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics, and the Director
of the Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology (UST) and
the NSF Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (LMS). Current research is devoted
to dynamical chemistry and biology, with a focus on the physics of elementary
processes in complex systems. A major research frontier is the new
development of “4D ultrafast diffraction and microscopy”, making possible the
imaging of transient structures in space and time with atomic-scale resolution.
He have also devoted some time to giving public lectures in order to enhance
awareness of the value of knowledge gained from fundamental research, and
helping the population of developing countries through the promotion of science
and technology for the betterment of society. Because of the unique East-West
cultures that He represent, He wrote a book Voyage Through Time – Walks of
Life to the Nobel Prize hoping to share the experience, especially with young
people, and to remind them that it is possible! This book is in 12 editions and
languages, so far.
►L'Oréal–UNESCO Women In Science prizes

In 1998, following advocacy by the Nobel Laureates Christian de Duve

ForMemRS and Pierre-Gilles de Gennes ForMemRS, the L'Oréal–UNESCO
Women in Science scheme was initiated. Five major prizes (now worth €100 
000 each) are awarded to women who have achieved outstanding success,
mainly in their research work, from the following geographical areas: Europe,
North America (including Canada), Latin America, Africa and Asia–Australia–
New Zealand.

The prizes are awarded at a major series of ceremonies in Paris, including

presentations by the laureates at the French Academy and also at an open event
with extensive press coverage at the major hall of the Sorbonne. One year, the
subject matter is the life sciences; in the next it is the physical sciences (in 2019
it was physical sciences and mathematics).

After the death of de Gennes, Ahmed Zewail was chosen to be his successor as
president of the Awards Committee, and from 2000 onwards he carried out his
work (alongside de Duve) with energy and imagination. Some 200 or so high-
profile nominations are submitted and their cases are scrutinized by a group of
initial evaluators, who, in due course, meet in Paris alongside representatives of
L'Oréal and UNESCO to make the final choice of laureates.

The L'Oréal–UNESCO scheme also awards some 20 or so research fellowships

that include substantial financial support to foster the research work of young
women from all parts of the world. I can testify to the extensive efforts that
Zewail made in presiding over the final choice of winners and in formulating
the procedure of selection, which was highly effective. Several of the L'Oréal–
UNESCO laureates have later been awarded Nobel prizes.
►Awards and Honors

In 1999, Zewail became the first Egyptian and the first Arab to receive a science
Nobel Prize when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Zewail gave
his Nobel Lecture on "Femtochemistry: Atomic-Scale Dynamics of the
Chemical Bond Using Ultrafast Lasers". In 1999, he received Egypt's highest
state honor, the Grand Collar of the Nile. In October 2006, Zewail received the
Albert Einstein World Award of Science for "his pioneering development of the
new field of femtoscience and for his seminal contributions to the revolutionary
discipline of physical biology, creating new ways for better understanding the
functional behavior of biological systems by directly visualizing them in the
four dimensions of space and time.

Other international awards include the King Faisal International Prize (1989),
Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1993) awarded to him by the Wolf Foundation, the
Tolman Award (1997), the Robert A. Welch Award (1997), the Golden Plate
Award of the American Academy of Achievement (2000), the Othmer Gold
Medal (2009), the Priestley Medal (2011) from the American Chemical Society
and the Davy Medal (2011) from the Royal Society.

Zewail was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (Formers) in 2001.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2002.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Lund University in Sweden in May
2003 and was made a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences. Cambridge University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science in
2006. In May 2008, Zewail received an honorary doctorate from Completeness
University of Madrid. In February 2009, Zewail was awarded an honorary
doctorate in arts and sciences by the University of Jordan. In May 2010, he gave
the commencement address at Southwestern University. On 3 October 2011 he
was awarded an honorary doctorate in science from the University of Glasgow.
On 19 May 2014, he was awarded an honorary degree from Yale University.
The Zewail city of science and technology, established in 2000 and revived in
2011, is named in his honor.

►Death and funeral

Zewail died aged 70 on the morning of August 2, 2016. He was recovering from
cancer, however, the exact cause of his death is unknown. A military funeral
was held for Zewail on August 7, 2016, at the El-Mosheer Tantawy mosque in
Cairo, Egypt. Those attending included President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Prime
Minister Sherif Ismail, al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayeb, Defence
Minister Sedki Sobhi, former President Adly Mansour, former Prime Minister
Ibrahim Mahlab and heart surgeon Magdi Yacoub. The funeral prayers were led
by Ali Gomaa, former Grand Mufti of Egypt.