George Andrew Olah
George Andrew Olah (born
May 22,
1927 as
György Oláh) is a
Hungarian-born American
chemist. He was significant in stabilizing and in studying
carbocations. He won a
Nobel Prize in
Chemistry in
1994. In
2005 he was awarded the
Priestley Medal, the highest honor granted by the
American Chemical Society.
Olah studied, then taught, at what is now
Budapest University of Technology and Economics. As a result of the
1956 Hungarian Revolution, he and his family moved briefly to
England and then to
Canada where he joined
Dow Chemical in
Sarnia, Ontario. Olah's pioneering work on carbocations started during his eight years with Dow. In
1965 he returned to academia at
Case Western Reserve University and then to
University of Southern California in
1977. In
1971, Olah became a
naturalized citizen of the
United States.
Olah is currently a distinguished professor at the
University of Southern California and the director of the
Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. In 2005, Olah wrote an essay promoting the
methanol economy. His book
The Methanol Economy is available
now at Wiley at
Keplers,
amazon.comand other bookstores.
* George A. Olah,
Alain Goeppert,
G.K. Surya Prakash,
Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, Angewandte Chemie International Edition Volume 44, Issue 18, Pages 2636 - 2639, 2005
*
Nobel Prize website*
Methanol as an alternative fuel Recording of a discussion with George Olah broadcast on
NPR.
