A. H. Zewail. Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize, American University in Cairo (AUC), Cairo, 2002; so far in 17 languages and editions: English, French, German, Spanish, Romanian, Hungarian (in press), Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Bahasa Malaysian, Indonesian, Hindi; and 4 editions. For detailed reviews of this book see, for example, articles written by W. Sibbett, B. V. McKoy and C. A. McKoy, and M. Chergui.

For this journey on the road to the Nobel prize, I have been asked several times to write a biography, or at least a biographical summary of my life. I declined these invitations. I was of the opinion that a traditional biography should represent a lifetime of work and experience and much effort and time are needed to do it well. In July of 1997 while on a trip to Cairo this strong feeling softened to a more moderate one. I was stimulated to ask a few questions by two books I was reading, one titled A History of Knowledge by Charles van Doren and the other Making Waves by Charles Townes. How did I acquire knowledge? Why did I become a scientist? What are the forces that have determined the walks of my own life? What are the meanings of faith, destiny, and luck? In the attempt to answer such complex questions, I began to sketch my thoughts....

D. L. Smith. Coherent Thinking, Eng. Sci. 62, 7 (1999)

At 5:40 in the doggone morning on Tuesday, October 12, Ahmed Zewail got a phone call. But it wasn't a wrong number or a particularly ambitious aluminum-window salesman—it was the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences informing him he had won the 1999 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The citation reads, in part, that Zewail "is being rewarded for his pioneering investigation of fundamental chemical reactions, using ultra-short laser flashes on the time scale on which the reactions actually occur"...

Energy in Cosmos, Molecules and Life, Alfred Nobel Symposium, Sånga-Säby Conference Center, Sweden, June 18-22, 2005.

This unique occasion gathers the leading competence from three broad scientific areas to discuss energy issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. This Nobel Symposium is the first to include all of the natural science categories of the Nobel Prize: physics, chemistry and physiology or medicine. The purpose is to create conditions for exchange and interaction, partly between different disciplines and partly between promising young researchers and the world's leading researchers...

Frontiers of Molecular Science, Nobel Centennial Symposium, Friiberghs Manor, Örsundsbro and Stockholm University, Sweden, December 4-7, 2001.

The Nobel Foundation's Symposium program was initiated in 1965. Since that time more than a hundred symposia have taken place. The symposia are devoted to areas of science where breakthroughs are occurring or deal with other topics of primary cultural or social significance. A series of Nobel Centennial Symposia was organized in 2001 to commemorate 100th anniversary of the Nobel prizes given out for world-class accomplishments in physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine...

Molecular Frontiers, a global effort to promote the understanding and appreciation of molecular science in society.

Molecular Frontiers, a world-wide virtual institute, will seek to strengthen the position of science in society—among the public, in education and among politicians—as a primary approach to describing and analyzing reality. The institute will provide a forum for exchange and analysis of scientific advances and their implications, and will employ various strategies to engage the public in an open dialogue. The institute's activities will promote scientific knowledge in general with special emphasis on the molecular perspective. As knowledge may be considered a right to all, global open access will be a guiding principle...

Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology.

At Caltech, the main mission of the newly-established Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology (UST) is to develop the science and technology for observing complex molecular structures in motion using diffraction, spectroscopy, and microscopy. Such combined atomic-scale resolutions in space and time constitute the basis for a new field of study in what we refer to as four-dimensional (4D) structural dynamics...

A. H. Zewail. The World in 50 Years, in The Way We Will Be 50 Years from Today, ed. M. Wallace, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2008, p. 228.

The world is an uncertain place, which is why the future and the unknown absolutely fascinate us. Veteran television journalist Mike Wallace asked the question "What will life be like 50 years from now?" to sixty of the world's greatest minds. Their responses offer a fascinating glimpse into the cultural, scientific, political, and spiritual moods of the times...

A. H. Zewail. Science and Technology in the Twenty-First Century, Academy of Sciences of Malaysia (ASM) Public Lecture, ASM, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 14, 2002.

Since the beginning of human civilization, science and technology has progressed in a continuous process. Fire must have been an exciting new technology for the first humans and to this day we are continuing research to fully answer the question, what is fire? But the search for new knowledge is based on rational thinking, which is fundamental for progress and for making new discoveries...

Physical Biology: From Atoms to Medicine, ed. A. H. Zewail, Imperial College Press, London (2008).

D. Shorokhov and A. H. Zewail. 4D Electron Imaging: Principles and Perspectives, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 10, 2879 (2008).

O.-H. Kwon, B. Barwick, H. S. Park, J. S. Baskin and A. H. Zewail. Nanoscale Mechanical Drumming Visualized by 4D Electron Microscopy, Nano Lett. 8, 3557 (2008).

B. Barwick, H. S. Park, O.-H. Kwon, J. S. Baskin and A. H. Zewail. 4D Imaging of Transient Structures and Morphologies in Ultrafast Electron Microscopy, Science 322, 1227 (2008).

D.-S. Yang, C. Lao and A. H. Zewail. 4D Electron Diffraction Reveals Correlated Unidirectional Behavior in Zinc Oxide Nanowires, Science 321, 1660 (2008).

O.-H. Kwon, B. Barwick, H. S. Park, J. S. Baskin and A. H. Zewail. 4D Visualization of Embryonic, Structural Crystallization by Single-Pulse Microscopy, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 105, 8519 (2008).

M. M. Lin, L. Meinhold, D. Shorokhov and A. H. Zewail. Unfolding and Melting of DNA (RNA) Hairpins: The Concept of Structure-Specific 2D Dynamic Landscapes, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 10, 4227 (2008).

F. Carbone, P. Baum, P. Rudolf and A. H. Zewail. Structural Preablation Dynamics of Graphite Observed by Ultrafast Electron Crystallography, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 035501 (2008).

H. Ma, C. Wan, A. Wu and A. H. Zewail. DNA Folding and Melting in Real Time: Observed Collapsed Structures Redefine the Energy Landscape, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104, 712 (2007).

O.-H. Kwon and A. H. Zewail. Double Proton Transfer Dynamics of Model DNA Base Pairs in the Condensed Phase, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104, 8703 (2007).

J. Tang, D.-S. Yang and A. H. Zewail. Ultrafast Electron Crystallography. 3. Theoretical Modeling of Structural Dynamics, J. Phys. Chem. C 111, 8957 (2007).

H. S. Park, J. S. Baskin, O.-H. Kwon and A. H. Zewail. Atomic-Scale Imaging in Real and Energy Space Developed in Ultrafast Electron Microscopy, Nano Lett. 7, 2545 (2007).

N. Gedik, D.-S. Yang, G. Logvenov, I. Bozovic and A. H. Zewail. Nonequilibrium Phase Transitions in Cuprates Observed by Ultrafast Electron Crystallography, Science 316, 425 (2007).

P. Baum, D.-S. Yang and A. H. Zewail. 4D Visualization of Transitional Structures in Phase Transformations by Electron Diffraction, Science 318, 788 (2007).

A. H. Zewail. 4D Ultrafast Electron Diffraction, Crystallography, and Microscopy, Annu. Rev. Phys. Chem. 57, 65 (2006).

J. S. Baskin and A. H. Zewail. Oriented Ensembles in Ultrafast Electron Diffraction, Chem. Phys. Chem. 7, 1562 (2006).

M. S. Grinolds, V. A. Lobastov, J. Weissenrieder and A. H. Zewail. Four-Dimensional Ultrafast Electron Microscopy of Phase Transitions, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 103, 18427 (2006).

V. A. Lobastov, R. Srinivasan and A. H. Zewail. Four-Dimensional Ultrafast Electron Microscopy, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102, 7069 (2005).

R. Srinivasan, J. S. Feenstra, S. T. Park, S. Xu and A. H. Zewail. Dark Structures in Molecular Radiationless Transitions Determined by Ultrafast Diffraction, Science 307, 558 (2005).

D. H. Paik, I-R. Lee, D.-S. Yang, J. S. Baskin and A. H. Zewail. Electrons in Finite-Sized Water Cavities: Hydration Dynamics Observed in Real Time, Science 306, 672 (2004).

C.-Y. Ruan, V. A. Lobastov, F. Vigliotti, S. Chen and A. H. Zewail. Ultrafast Electron Crystallography of Interfacial Water, Science 304, 80 (2004).

H. Ihee, V. A. Lobastov, U. M. Gomez, B. M. Goodson, R. Srinivasan, C.-Y. Ruan and A. H. Zewail. Direct Imaging of Transient Molecular Structures with Ultrafast Diffraction, Science 291, 458 (2001).

Caltech 4D Microscope Revolutionizes the Way We Look at the Nano World, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA, November 20, 2008.

More than a century ago, the development of the earliest motion picture technology made what had been previously thought "magical" a reality: capturing and recreating the movement and dynamism of the world around us. A breakthrough technology based on new concepts has now accomplished a similar feat, but on an atomic scale—by allowing, for the first time, the real-time, real-space visualization of fleeting changes in the structure and shape of matter barely a billionth of a meter in size. Such "movies" of atomic changes in materials of gold and graphite, obtained using the technique, are featured in a paper appearing in the November 21 issue of the journal Science. 4D microscopy videos can be viewed at the UST web site...

Zewail Honored with Einstein Award, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA, September 21, 2006.

The World Cultural Council will present the 2006 Albert Einstein World Award of Science to Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Physics and professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology. This recognition is 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," according to the World Cultural Council's announcement...

Nobel Laureate Receives $17.5 Million Grant to Create the New Field of Physical Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA, August 10, 2005.

Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist Ahmed Zewail has received an $17.5 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to create the Ultrafast Science and Technology (UST) Center at the California Institute of Technology. The center will focus on a new scientific discipline at Caltech for which Zewail has coined the name physical biology. The field will create new ways of understanding the dynamical behavior of biological systems by directly observing them in the four dimensions of space and time...

Other press releases.

Professor Ahmed Zewail has presented over three hundred named, plenary, and keynote lectures, including: Bernstein, Berson, Bodenstein, Cavendish (Scott Series), Celsius, Condon, Aimé Cotton, Coulson, Debye, Einstein (Berlin, New Delhi, Mexico), Eyring, Faraday, Franklin (Benjamin), Gandhi, Helmholtz, Hinshelwood, Karrer, Kirkwood, Kistiakowsky, Lawrence, London, Nobel, Novartis, Noyes, Onassis, Ørsted, Pascal (Blaise), Pauling, Perrin, Pimentel, Planck, Polanyi, Raman, Roberts, Röntgen, Schrödinger, U Thant (United Nations), Thomson (J. J.), Tolman, Watson, Welch, Wilson, and Zewail.

A. H. Zewail. Franklin's Vision, Speech at the Annual General Meeting of the American Philosophical Society in celebration of the Franklin Tercentenary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 27, 2006.

On this special occasion of the Tercentenary, I am especially delighted to speak in honor of a polymath and an American icon, Benjamin Franklin. Since his death in 1790, Franklin has been revered, memorialized, and made into an educational, financial, and political icon. Through his collective work this sage has climbed to the apex of human endeavor in the sciences, public service, and statesmanship in international relations. Such great heights for a man of wit and wisdom are reached by very few in the world, both then and now...

A. H. Zewail. Light and Life, Ninth Rajiv Gandhi Science and Technology Lecture, Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Bangalore, India, October 17, 2002.

Scientific research is the subject of this lecture, but I wish to focus here on one of its pillars—the value of curiosity-driven research and its impact on our life, the life of the "haves" and "have-nots". For this scientific endeavour, I will demonstrate my point from the study of one phenomenon that has occupied the thinking of humans throughout history—it is the phenomenon of light. What is light?

A. H. Zewail. Time's Mysteries and Miracles: Consonance with Physical and Life Sciences, Albert Einstein Public Lecture, IIT, New Delhi, India, October 22, 2002.

Ever since the dawn of history, humans have been the benefactors of time's miracles, but at the same time they have been baffled by time's mysteries. More than six millennia ago, the philosophy and measurement of time occupied the minds of scholars in the land of Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and, even today we struggle with the meaning of time. In this overview, I present some concepts and techniques developed in the science and technology of time, and an exposé of some of the mysteries and miracles that are in harmony with physical and life sciences...

A. H. Zewail. It is Possible, One Hundred Reasons to be a Scientist, 2nd ed., ICTP, Trieste, 2005, p. 260.

On the banks of the Nile, the Rosetta branch, I was born in Damanhur, the "City of Horus", only 60 km from Alexandria. In retrospect, it is remarkable that my childhood origins were flanked by two great places—Rosetta, the city where the famous Stone was discovered, and Alexandria, the home of ancient learning...

G. K. Drayna and D. J. Flannigan; Mentor: A. H. Zewail. Ultrafast Electron Microscopy: Watching Atoms Move and Crystals Melt, Caltech Undergrad. Res. J. 8, 36 (2008).

For decades, researchers have relied on static images provided by electron microscopy and static diffraction patterns provided by X-ray crystallography to infer how a system operates. The major drawback to these otherwise very powerful techniques is that no direct experimental evidence is gathered about the structure of the transition states of the system. That is, these techniques can only provide information about the three spatial dimensions; while information about how the system behaves in the fourth dimension—time—remains a mystery. Therefore, to overcome this fundamental problem, a methodology that can access all four dimensions simultaneously must be realized and demonstrated. The development of such a technology would mark a great day in the advancement of human knowledge. Fortunately, that day has arrived with the advent of Ultrafast Electron Microscopy (UEM)...

J. S Baskin and A. H. Zewail. Freezing Atoms in Motion, J. Chem. Educ. 78, 737 (2001).

The concept of the atom, proposed 24 centuries ago and rejected by Aristotle, was born on a purely philosophical basis, surely without anticipating some of the 20th century's most triumphant scientific discoveries. Atoms can now be seen, observed in motion, and manipulated...

J. S. Baskin and A. H. Zewail. Freezing Time—In a Femtosecond, Sci. Spectra 14, 62 (1998).

With ultrashort pulses of laser light, it has become possible to observe physical, chemical and biological changes with a resolution of femtoseconds, 15 orders of magnitude faster than the human heart beat, reaching the scale of atomic motion, spatial and temporal...

A. H. Zewail. The Birth of Molecules, Sci. Am. 263, 76 (1990).

In 1872 railroad magnate Leland Stanford wagered $25,000 that a galloping horse, at some point in stride, lifts all four hooves off the ground. To prove it, Stanford employed English photographer Eadweard Muybridge. After many attempts, Muybridge developed a camera shutter that opened and closed for only two thousandths of a second, enabling him to capture on film a horse flying through the air. During the past century, all scientific disciplines from astrophysics to zoology have exploited high-speed photography to revolutionize understanding of animal and mechanical motions that are quicker than the eye can follow...

M. Gruebele and A. H. Zewail. Ultrafast Reaction Dynamics, Phys. Today 43, 24 (1990).

With new laser techniques and with gas phase and molecular beam experiments, it is now possible to determine the ultrafast motion in isolated chemical reactions: chemistry on the 10^-13-second time scale...

A. H. Zewail. Laser Selective Chemistry: Is It Possible?, Phys. Today 33, 27 (1980).

With sufficiently brief and intense radiation, properly tuned to specific resonances, we may be able to fulfill a chemist's dream, to break particular selected bonds in large molecules...

D. Baltimore and A. H. Zewail. We Need a Science White House, Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2008, p. A18.

Tomorrow Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain should have been going toe-to-toe in a televised science debate. All three were invited by a bipartisan group of Nobel laureates and other scholars called ScienceDebate 2008 to step on stage at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and explain how they will ensure that America continues to dominate the sciences. Leading in scientific research and advancement is an essential element to our future prosperity, health and national defense...

A. H. Zewail. We Arabs Must Wage a New Form of Jihad, Independent, August 24, 2006.

The cataclysmic wars in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq have uncovered the reality of Arab unity and plight, and the collective conscience of international society. It is abundantly clear that the Arab people must themselves build a new system for a new future. The current state, as judged by a low GDP, high level of illiteracy, and deteriorating performance in education and science, is neither in consonance with their hearts and minds nor does it provide for their political, economic, and educational aspirations...

A. H. Zewail. The West and Islam Need not be in Conflict, Independent, October 24, 2006.

Five years after September 11, we must ask, can western wars solve the so-called global conflict with the Islamic world? The answer, in my opinion, is no. A far better state of world peace would be achieved if the West would make a serious commitment to the just resolution of conflicts, and be genuinely involved, using a fraction of war costs, in building bridges to progress and peace with an understanding of the profound role of pride and faith in the lives of Muslims...

A. H. Zewail. Mediterranean Scientopolitics, Science 321, 1417 (2008).

On this year's Bastille Day in July, the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, inaugurated a new initiative for uniting the Mediterranean South with Europe in general, and France in particular. The aim of the Mediterranean Union (MU), an analogue of the post-Cold War European Union (EU), is to "lay the foundations of a political, economic and cultural union founded on the principles of strict equality." Comprising 27 EU members and states from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans, the MU would in principle unite close to 800 million people. In June, a meeting was held at the Institut de France with representation from many academies, scientists, and politicians to discuss possible cooperative programs. The goals expressed at the meeting are admirable; however, the MU's motives need to be clearly defined, as the issues for the MU are very different from those for the EU. Most important, thus far missing in the fabric of the former is an explicit role for education and science...

A. H. Zewail. The Future of Our World, 5th U Thant Distinguished Lecture, United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan, April 15, 2003.

Over the last century, our world has experienced at times a "beautiful age" with promises of peace and prosperity, but then some imposing forces changed the entire landscape. History reminds us of recurrences, and the current state of the world is not so different that we may ask—what political and economic forces cause such disorder in a world seeking prosperity through globalization and revolutionary advances in technology? Here we will address the need for a rational world vision that must take into account developments in the population of the have-nots and dialogues of cultures. It is a vision of economic, political, religious, and cultural dimensions in world affairs. Only with such a vision can we shape a bright future for our world...

A. H. Zewail. Dialogue of Civilizations: Making History Through a New World Vision, UNESCO Public Address, Paris, France, April 20, 2002.

The 2002 UNESCO conference, "Science et la quête du sens" in Paris, was devoted to science and the quest for meaning; the English title, "Science and the Spiritual Quest", emphasizes the spiritual dimension, a realm beyond science. Similarly, this chapter, which is based on my lecture given at the conference, is concerned with dimensions beyond science—our human existence in civilizations and cultures that may or may not be in a state of clash...

A. H. Zewail. Science in the Developing World, TWAS Newslett. 14, 23 (2002).

I am pleased to have this opportunity to share with you some personal reflections on current issues which I believe may well be at the core of world peace and stability. Science education and development through science are the subject of my presentation, and I thought I would use my personal journey through two cultures, one currently developing and the other developed, to address issues of concern and what should be done to achieve progress...

A. H. Zewail. Science for the Have-Nots, Nature 410, 741 (2001).

Only a fifth of the population enjoys the benefit of life in the 'developed world', and the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to increase, threatening stability. According to the World Bank, of the 6 billion people on Earth, 4.8 billion live in developing countries, 3 billion live on less than US$2 a day, and 1.2 billion live on less than $1 a day, which defines the absolute poverty standard; 1.5 billion people do not have access to clean water...

The Ahmed Zewail Foundation for Knowledge and Development was established through the American University in Cairo as a non-profit, non-political organization with the purpose of disseminating useful knowledge. The Foundation currently provides prizes for young people who "demonstrate extraordinary commitment to the pursuit of scientific inquiry and the affirmation of humanistic values". In addition, at the Opera House one prize is given annualy for outstanding achievements and creativity in the arts.

Two major Zewail prizes have also been established for outstanding achievements in science and technology, one by the American Chemical Society and the other by Elsevier. The prizes honor scientists from around the world for their creative contrubutions.

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