To understand Zewail’s genius, one must understand the scale of time . A second is slow. A millisecond (one-thousandth of a second) is the blink of an eye. A microsecond (one-millionth) is a flash of a camera. A nanosecond (one-billionth) is how fast a transistor switches.
Ahmed Hassan Zewail (February 26, 1946 – August 2, 2016) was an Egyptian-American chemist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century for his revolutionary work in observing chemical reactions as they actually happen. ahmed zewail
In 1999, he was awarded the in solitary honor (no co-recipients) for his development of "femtospectroscopy" and the study of transition states in chemical reactions at the timescale of femtoseconds. To understand Zewail’s genius, one must understand the