A book that enlightens the life of Ahmed H Zewail from his early childhood to his days at CalTech.Born in Damanhur, Egypt, Ahmed H Zewail grew up with his family, studied at a local primary school and eventually graduated from Alexandria University. After completing his schooling, he went on to teach chemistry to undergraduates at the University of Alexandria.His contributions are not only to science but also to society. As a pioneer scientist, he returned to Egypt and had his fingerprints on all the initiatives to encourage scientific research and to upgrade the scientific and technological capabilities of his countrymen. He founded the Zewail City for Science and Technology — a non-profit educational institution for research and innovation in Cairo.A Nobel Prize winner, inventor of the ground-breaking four dimensional microscopy, and together with his other accolades, Ahmed H Zewail is one of the greatest scientists this century has produced. His foresight for the development of both the scientific and cultural fields in Egypt has made him a brilliant jewel for Egypt and the world.
A compilation of wonderful tributes to the late Ahmed Zewail (1946-2016), considered the 'Father of Femtochemistry', a long-standing icon in the field of physical chemistry, and the father of ultrafast electron-based methods. The book contains testimonies by friends and relatives of Zewail and by outstanding scientists from around the world who worked or have been affiliated with the Nobel prizewinning professor. Each contribution describes the author's own unique experience and personal relationship with Zewail, and includes details of his scientific achievements and the stories around them. Personal and Scientific Reminiscences collects accounts from the most important individuals in the physical and chemical sciences to give us a unique insight into the world and work of one of the great scientists of our time.
From a beginning in an Egyptian Delta town and the port of Alexandria to the scenic vistas of sunny southern California, Ahmed Zewail takes us on a voyage through time -- his own life and the split-second world of the femtosecond. In this engaging exposé of his life and work until his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1999, Zewail explores in non-technical language the landscape of molecules glimpsed on the scale of one quadrillionth of a second: the femtosecond, 0. 000 000 000 000 001 second. Zewail enriches the journey into the strange territory of femtochemistry with insightful analogies and illustrations to aid both the general reader and the scientifically inclined. He likewise draws lessons from his life story so far, and he meditates on the impact the revolution in science has had on our modern world -- in both developed and developing countries. He suggests a concrete course of action for the world of the have-nots, and ends the book with hope for Egypt in developing the nation's greatest natural resource -- its youth -- to build a more promising future, and for America to develop a new vision domestically and internationally.
This book presents the latest results from high energy physics laboratories. The topics discussed include: Cosmology, Heavy Ions, Electroweak, Heavy Flavour Physics and CP Violation/Rare Decays, QCD and Beyond the Standard Model, Planck Scale Physics, Accelerator and Non-Accelerator Physics and Instrumentation.
Structural phase transitions, mechanical deformations, and the embryonic stages of melting and crystallization are examples of phenomena that can now be imaged in unprecedented structural detail with high spatial resolution, and ten orders of magnitude as fast as hitherto. No monograph in existence attempts to cover the revolutionary dimensions that EM in its various modes of operation nowadays makes possible. The authors of this book chart these developments, and also compare the merits of coherent electron waves with those of synchrotron radiation. They judge it prudent to recall some important basic procedural and theoretical aspects of imaging and diffraction so that the reader may better comprehend the significance of the new vistas and applications now afoot. This book is not a vade mecum - numerous other texts are available for the practitioner for that purpose.
Few books cover experimental and theoretical methods to characterize decomposition, combustion and detonation of energetic materials. This volume, by internationally known and major contributors to the field, is unique because it summarizes the most important recent work, what we know with confidence, and what main areas remain to be investigated. Most chapters comprise summaries of work spanning decades and contain expert commentary available nowhere else. Although energetic materials are its focus, this book provides a guide to modern methods for investigations of condensed and gas-phase reactions. Although these energetic reactions are complex and difficult to study, the work discussed here provides readers with a substantial understanding of the behavior of materials now in use, and a predictive capability for the development of new materials based on target properties.
This inspired book by some of the most influential scientists of our time--including six Nobel laureates--chronicles our emerging understanding of the chemical bond through the last nine decades and into the future. From Pauling's early structural work using x-ray and electron diffraction to Zewail's femtosecond lasers that probe molecular dynamics in real time; from Crick's molecular biology to Rich's molecular recognition, this book explores a rich tradition of scientific heritage and accomplishment. The perspectives given by Pauling, Perutz, Rich, Crick, Porter, Polanyi, Herschbach, Zewail, and Bernstein celebrate major scientific achievements in chemistry and biology with the chemical bond playing a fundamental role. In a unique presentation that also provides some lively insights into the very nature of scientific thought and discovery, The Chemical Bond: Structure and Dynamics will be of general interest to scientists, science historians, and the scientifically inclined populous.
Linus Pauling wrote a stellar series of over 800 scientific papers spanning an amazing range of fields, some of which he himself initiated. This book is a selection of the most important of his writings in the fields of quantum mechanics, chemical bonding (covalent, ionic, metallic, and hydrogen bonding), molecular rotation and entropy, protein structure, hemoglobin, molecular disease, molecular evolution, the antibody mechanism, the molecular basis of anesthesia, orthomolecular medicine, radiation chemistry?biology, and nuclear structure. Through these papers the reader gets a fresh, unfiltered view of the genius of Pauling's many contributions to chemistry, chemical physics, molecular biology, and molecular medicine.
In this invaluable book, 36 famous chemists, including 18 Nobel laureates, tell the reader about their lives in science, the beginnings of their careers, their aspirations, and their hardships and triumphs. The reader will learn about their seminal discoveries, and the conversations in the book bring out the humanity of these great scientists. Highlighted in the stories are the discovery of new elements and compounds, the VSEPR model, computational chemistry, organic synthesis, natural products, polysaccharides, supramolecular chemistry, peptide synthesis, combinatorial chemistry, X-ray crystallography, the reaction mechanism and kinetics, electron transfer in small and large systems, non-equilibrium systems, oscillating reactions, atmospheric chemistry, chirality, and the history of chemistry.
These two volumes on Femtochemistry present a timely contribution to a field central to the understanding of the dynamics of the chemical bond. This century has witnessed great strides in time and space resolutions, down to the atomic scale, providing chemists, biologists and physicists with unprecedented opportunities for seeing microscopic structures and dynamics. Femtochemistry is concerned with the time resolution of the most elementary motions of atoms during chemical change -- bond breaking and bond making -- on the femtosecond (10-15 second) time scale. This atomic scale of time resolution has now reached the ultimate for the chemical bond and as Lord George Porter puts it, chemists are near the end of the race against time. These two volumes cover the general concepts, techniques and applications of femtochemistry.Professor Ahmed Zewail, who has made the pioneering contributions in this field, has from over 250 publications selected the articles for this anthology. These volumes begin with a commentary and a historical chronology of the milestones. He then presents a broad perspective of the current state of knowledge in femtochemistry by researchers around the world and discusses possible new directions. In the words of a colleague, "it is a must on the reading-list for all of my students ... all readers will find this to be an informative and valuable overview."The introductory articles in Volume I provide reviews for both the non-experts as well as for experts in the field. This is followed by papers on the basic concepts. For applications, elementary reactions are studied first and then complex reactions. Volume I is complete with studies of solvation dynamics, non-reactive systems, ultrafast electron diffraction and the control of chemical reactions.Volume II continues with reaction rates, the concept of elementary intramolecular vibrational-energy redistribution (IVR) and the phenomena of rotational coherence which has become a powerful tool for the determination of molecular structure via time resolution. The second volume ends with an extensive list of references, according to topics, based on work by Professor Zewail and his group at Caltech.These collected works by Professor Zewail will certainly be indispensable to both experts and beginners in the field. The author is known for his clarity and for his creative and systematic contributions. These volumes will be of interest and should prove useful to chemists, biologists and physicists. As noted by Professor J Manz (Berlin) and Professor A W Castleman, Jr. (Penn State): femtochemistry is yielding exciting new discoveries from analysis to control of chemical reactions, with applications in many domains of chemistry and related fields, e.g., physical, organic and inorganic chemistry, surface science, molecular biology, ... etc.
