2000 Fredericton Encaenia - Ceremony C
Zewail, Ahmed H.
Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.)
Orator: Patterson, Stephen E.
Citation:
ENCAENIA, MAY, 2000
AHMED ZEWAIL
to be Doctor of Science
We at the University of New Brunswick are honoured and privileged to welcome the winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Dr. Ahmed Zewail is at the peak of a brilliant career that began in Egypt, the country of his birth and youth, and that for the past twenty-four years has flourished at the California Institute of Technology, better known as Caltech, in Pasadena. He was the first scholar to be appointed as Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Physics, and today he is Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics, as well as Director of the world-renowned Laboratory for Molecular Sciences.
Linus Pauling's name still resonates with us at UNB, both among chemists influenced by his ground-breaking work in molecular structures, and among those more generally interested in his provocative scientific theories. Pauling gave the Bryan Priestman lectures here some 45 years ago, and he also received an honorary degree. Among the topics of his lectures was his theory about the value of large doses of Vitamin C as a remedy for the common cold, the subject of a later best-selling book.
It is worth remembering Pauling's contributions to knowledge, not only because Professor Zewail holds the Pauling Chair, but because it helps us see how brilliance builds on brilliance. In Pauling's time, chemists were fascinated by structures, and they loved to manipulate their molecular models to show how they were built. In a word, they were interested in architecture. They knew that in chemical reactions, molecules broke apart and reformed, but they had no way of observing this, and spoke entirely in theoretical terms about transformations that no one had ever observed. This is where the work of Professor Zewail began. He was interested in chemical reactions as processes, and he was determined to find a way to observe them. In the 1980s, he began to experiment with lasers and molecular beams to record the motions of molecules as they break apart and reform in a chemical reaction. To accomplish this, he postulated techniques for using ultrafast lasers that could both measure and photograph chemical reactions as they take place. The trick was to capture in a split second hundreds of snapshots of such reactions so that the entire process of transformation, including all intermediate stages, might be studied as discrete freeze-framed images, or run together in sequence like a movie to reveal the process as it unfolds. The technique that Professor Zewail perfected required laser pulses of almost incredible speeds to catch chemical reactions in the smallest bits of time, called femtoseconds. A femtosecond is one quadrillionth of a second. To put it another way, a femtosecond is to a second as a second is to thirty-two million years. Not surprisingly, Professor Zewail's way of looking at chemistry has transformed the discipline. Where Pauling had given us architecture, Zewail has introduced time and motion; where the one was static, the new approach was dynamic.
Femtochemistry is the product of Ahmed Zewail's brilliant contribution to knowledge. His 1994 two-volume book on the subject has revolutionized chemistry. As one of his colleagues has said: "with Femtochemistry a new era of chemistry has been born. His work has given reality to the most central concept of chemistry - how bonds are made and broken in real time." Another has commented: "Most scientists, if they are lucky, will do something that expands the store of knowledge in their field in a way somebody else cares about. A far rarer and much more valuable contribution is to change the way people think about a subject. Zewail is one of the few people who have achieved this in chemistry."
It is nice to know that, as profound as his accomplishments have been, Professor Zewail carries his honors with humility and humor. When asked, upon receiving word of his Nobel Prize, what practical applications his discoveries might have, he replied that there were none. He did note, however, that he had had a terrible cold before the news arrived, and as soon as he received the middle-of-the-night phone call from Sweden about his award, the cold vanished. His perfectly scientific conclusion, perhaps standing Pauling's theory about Vitamin C on its head, was that the apparent remedy for the common cold was a Nobel Prize. This was an insight, one might guess, that came to him in a femtosecond.
It is a thrill for us that, while Dr. Ahmed Zewail has been much honored throughout the world, his first Canadian honorary degree is this one now granted by UNB We welcome him to the august circle of which Linus Pauling was a member, and we thank him for lending his name and his stature to a university where excellence in scientific inquiry is a constant goal.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3
AHMED ZEWAIL
to be Doctor of Science
We at the University of New Brunswick are honoured and privileged to welcome the winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Dr. Ahmed Zewail is at the peak of a brilliant career that began in Egypt, the country of his birth and youth, and that for the past twenty-four years has flourished at the California Institute of Technology, better known as Caltech, in Pasadena. He was the first scholar to be appointed as Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Physics, and today he is Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics, as well as Director of the world-renowned Laboratory for Molecular Sciences.
Linus Pauling's name still resonates with us at UNB, both among chemists influenced by his ground-breaking work in molecular structures, and among those more generally interested in his provocative scientific theories. Pauling gave the Bryan Priestman lectures here some 45 years ago, and he also received an honorary degree. Among the topics of his lectures was his theory about the value of large doses of Vitamin C as a remedy for the common cold, the subject of a later best-selling book.
It is worth remembering Pauling's contributions to knowledge, not only because Professor Zewail holds the Pauling Chair, but because it helps us see how brilliance builds on brilliance. In Pauling's time, chemists were fascinated by structures, and they loved to manipulate their molecular models to show how they were built. In a word, they were interested in architecture. They knew that in chemical reactions, molecules broke apart and reformed, but they had no way of observing this, and spoke entirely in theoretical terms about transformations that no one had ever observed. This is where the work of Professor Zewail began. He was interested in chemical reactions as processes, and he was determined to find a way to observe them. In the 1980s, he began to experiment with lasers and molecular beams to record the motions of molecules as they break apart and reform in a chemical reaction. To accomplish this, he postulated techniques for using ultrafast lasers that could both measure and photograph chemical reactions as they take place. The trick was to capture in a split second hundreds of snapshots of such reactions so that the entire process of transformation, including all intermediate stages, might be studied as discrete freeze-framed images, or run together in sequence like a movie to reveal the process as it unfolds. The technique that Professor Zewail perfected required laser pulses of almost incredible speeds to catch chemical reactions in the smallest bits of time, called femtoseconds. A femtosecond is one quadrillionth of a second. To put it another way, a femtosecond is to a second as a second is to thirty-two million years. Not surprisingly, Professor Zewail's way of looking at chemistry has transformed the discipline. Where Pauling had given us architecture, Zewail has introduced time and motion; where the one was static, the new approach was dynamic.
Femtochemistry is the product of Ahmed Zewail's brilliant contribution to knowledge. His 1994 two-volume book on the subject has revolutionized chemistry. As one of his colleagues has said: "with Femtochemistry a new era of chemistry has been born. His work has given reality to the most central concept of chemistry - how bonds are made and broken in real time." Another has commented: "Most scientists, if they are lucky, will do something that expands the store of knowledge in their field in a way somebody else cares about. A far rarer and much more valuable contribution is to change the way people think about a subject. Zewail is one of the few people who have achieved this in chemistry."
It is nice to know that, as profound as his accomplishments have been, Professor Zewail carries his honors with humility and humor. When asked, upon receiving word of his Nobel Prize, what practical applications his discoveries might have, he replied that there were none. He did note, however, that he had had a terrible cold before the news arrived, and as soon as he received the middle-of-the-night phone call from Sweden about his award, the cold vanished. His perfectly scientific conclusion, perhaps standing Pauling's theory about Vitamin C on its head, was that the apparent remedy for the common cold was a Nobel Prize. This was an insight, one might guess, that came to him in a femtosecond.
It is a thrill for us that, while Dr. Ahmed Zewail has been much honored throughout the world, his first Canadian honorary degree is this one now granted by UNB We welcome him to the august circle of which Linus Pauling was a member, and we thank him for lending his name and his stature to a university where excellence in scientific inquiry is a constant goal.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3
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