Nobel Prize-Winning Chemist Ahmed Zewail to Speak at 16th Charles M. Knight Lecture

Akron, Ohio, March 1, 2002 — Nobel Prize winner Dr. Ahmed H. Zewail — one of the pre-eminent physical chemists in the world and the father of femtochemistry — will discuss his achievements at The University of Akron this month as the featured speaker for the 16th annual Charles M. Knight Lecture.

His presentation on "The Next Revolution in Time Resolution" will be held at 4 p.m. on March 20 in the Goodyear Polymer Center's Goodyear Auditorium.

The Knight Lecture is sponsored by UA's Department of Chemistry, and is free and open to the public.

Zewail was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in developing femtochemistry, which directly observes the act of bond breaking and bond formation that occur on the femtosecond (10^-15 s) time scale. Since the beginning of his career, the trademark of Zewail's research has been the development and application of novel laser-based techniques to study ultrafast processes of fundamental importance to the field of chemistry.

The lecture will be of interest to the general public as well as researchers and scientists, according to Dr. David S. Perry, chair of UA's Department of Chemistry.

"The significance of Dr. Zewail's work is that he was one of the first researchers to resolve chemical events while they are happening — as atoms come together to form new molecules or as molecules break apart," Perry says. "That's a rather stupendous thing to be able to do.

"His work lends a pictorial aspect to fundamental chemical events, and he gives us a new way of thinking about how these events can occur," he adds.

At the California Institute of Technology, Zewail is a professor of physics, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry and director of the National Science Foundation Laboratory for Molecular Sciences.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Zewail has received the Robert A. Welch Prize, the Wolf Prize, the King Faisal Prize, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Peter Debye Award and the E.O. Lawrence Award. A native of Egypt, Zewail was awarded the Grand Collar of the Nile — the country's highest honor — and postage stamps were issued to recognize his contributions to science and humanity.

A banquet for Zewail at the Radisson Hotel Akron City Centre follows the lecture. The deadline for banquet reservations is March 15. For more information call 330-972-8385.

The annual Charles M. Knight Lecture is made possible through a gift from Lovina Knight, whose grandfather, Charles M. Knight, founded chemistry studies at the University more than a century ago.

The University of Akron is the public research university for Northern Ohio. Founded in 1870, it is the only public university in Ohio with a science and engineering program ranked in the top five nationally by U.S. News & World Report. The University of Akron excels in such areas as polymer science, global business, marketing and intellectual property law.

Serving approximately 24,300 students, the University offers more than 350 associate, bachelor's, master's, doctoral and law degree programs and 100 certificate programs at its main campus in Akron, its Wayne College branch campus in Orrville, and at sites throughout Medina and Summit counties. For more information, visit www.uakron.edu.

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