Having an assignment surrounding Arabs who have contributed to the world in some way seems to neglect the fact that there’s like a ton of people who are Arab and have contributed to the world. Example, Steve Jobs though adopted by Americans he was Syrian by blood. That’s just one of like a ton that I can think of off the top of my head. For the purpose of this assignment, I decided to go with Nobel prize winners because that seemed fun.
What you encounter when you google that is Yasser Arafat, Sadat, and this guy Ahmed H. Zewail and a few others but I clicked on Ahmed’s name and had no clue as to what Femtochemistry was, so with my interest peaked I googled it and oh boy guess who has a new favorite field of science.
Femtochemistry for those who are not Ahmed is the area of physical chemistry that studies chemical reactions on extremely short timescales in order to study the very act of atoms within molecules rearranging themselves to form new molecules. The research done was accomplished by using a laser to detect the femtoseconds during a chemical reaction a femtosecond that is, one quadrillionth, or one-millionth of one billionth, of a second.
Ahmed himself was a pioneer of this new science and the potential that this research could contain is immense controlling chemical reactions as they happen what a spectacular thought could you stop things from rusting could you cure illnesses on an atomic level. I literally have no idea because I don’t understand the science behind it but, it’s pretty amazing to know someone did and that he was graciously awarded for his curiosity receiving the Nobel prize in 1999.
Ahmed H. Zewail born in 1946 in Damanhour, Egypt. Some would call this a pretty turbulent time in Egypt’s history given the Wars and egotistical rulers. Ahmed gained his bachelor of science and master of science in chemistry at Alexandria University, then moving to the States to finish his Ph.D. at U-Penn. As mentioned his key work was in femtochemistry he’s even known as the father of it, so as you can probably assume he was pretty important. Ahmed passed away in 2016 at the age of 70.
Read this Nobel Prize report and try to understand how smart this man was it will blow your mind. http://www.zewail.caltech.edu/JChemEduc.pdf
I may have only briefly mentioned that he’s Arab and that’s what this is all about but I’d like to make the point that he was a great and accomplished scientist before anything else and to know he’s also Arab is just a nice little side fact.
Now having read about him I can honestly say I would have loved to hear him talk about his research. Mixing chemistry and Physics is pretty amazing and his contributions to society will outlive us all.
R.I.P Ahmed H. Zewail 1946-2016 
“When I was a child, I thought of my Delta town as the center of the
universe, but now I realize how little I know about the universe. As a
child, I thought I was immortal, but now I recognize how limited a time
we all have. As a child, success meant scoring A on every exam, but
now I take it to mean good health, close family and friends, achieve-
ments in my work, and helping others.”
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