Gábor A. Somorjai

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Gábor Arpad Somorjai (born May 4, 1935 in Budapest , Hungary ) is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and one of the leading researchers in the field of surface chemistry .

life and work

Somorjai was the son of Jewish parents. With the help of Raoul Wallenberg , who issued the family Swedish passports, the family escaped admission to a concentration camp .

After the war, Somorjai studied chemical engineering at the University of Budapest from 1956 . As a participant in the Hungarian People's Uprising , he left Hungary after the invasion of the Soviet troops and emigrated to the United States . He enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his PhD in 1960 . After working at IBM , he returned to the university in 1964 as an assistant professor.

research

The application and further development of analysis techniques such as LEED revolutionized the investigation of surfaces in the 1950s and 1960s. Somorjai turned methods on platinum - catalysts to where he realized that lattice defects correlate with the catalytic activity. His research also had a major impact on the development of nanotechnology . As early as the 1980s, Somorjai was working on sum frequency spectroscopy (SFS), which allows the study of surface reactions without a vacuum chamber . In 1998 he and Gerhard Ertl were awarded the Wolf Prize for his research .

Somorjai was hired as a consultant for the 2002 Winter Olympics , where he promoted the development of faster ice skating surfaces. He had found that the ice skaters slide on vibrating molecules that act as lubricants and not slide in a trail of water as originally thought.

Somorjai has published over 1,000 articles in scientific journals and edited three books in the field of surface chemistry. He is one of the most cited researchers in the field of surface chemistry and catalysis .

Prizes and awards

Somorjai has received numerous prizes and awards. In 1976 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983. He received the Von Hippel Award in 1997 and the Wolf Foundation Prize in Chemistry in 1998 together with Gerhard Ertl from the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin.

He was also awarded the National Medal of Science for his contribution to the development of modern surface science and the establishment of the molecular basis of many technologies for the study of surfaces. The American Chemical Society awarded him the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry and the Adamson Award in Surface Chemistry .

In 2008 he received the Priestley Medal as the highest award of the American Chemical Society for his "exceptionally creative and original contributions to surface chemistry and catalysis", and in 2010 the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards . In 2013 Somorjai received the NAS Award in Chemical Sciences . For 2015 he was awarded the William H. Nichols Medal .

The American Chemical Society has presented the Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis since 2002 .

Web links

Commons : Gábor A. Somorjai  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Meurig Thomas : Gabor Arpad Somorjai: A Tribute . In: Topics in Catalysis . tape 14 , no. 1-4 , 2000, pp. 1 , doi : 10.1023 / A: 1009028029780 ( metapress.com [PDF]).
  2. ^ Molecular Chemistry And Catalysis By Surfaces . In: Chemical & Engineering News . tape 86 , no. 14 , March 7, 2008, p. 21-30 , doi : 10.1021 / cen-v086n014.p021 .
  3. ↑ THE 1998 WOLF FOUNDATION PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY
  4. ^ President Bush Names 15 to Receive National Medal of Science
  5. ↑ Mitch Jacoby: Somorjai is Priestley Medalist . In: American Chemical Society (Ed.): Chemical & Engineering News . 85, No. 24, 2007, p. 12. Retrieved June 20, 2007.
  6. ↑ Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis ( Memento of the original from September 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / webapps.acs.org
personal data
SURNAME Somorjai, Gábor A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Somorjai, Gábor Arpad (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American-Hungarian chemist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest