| George A. Olah  AKA György Andrew Oláh
Born: 22-May-1927
Birthplace: Budapest, Hungary
Died: 8-Mar-2017
Location of death: Beverly Hills, CA
Cause of death: unspecified
Gender: Male
Religion: Agnostic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Chemist
Party Affiliation: Republican Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Isolated carbonium ions American chemist George A. Olah was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1994. He was educated at Budapest University of Technology and Economics but left his homeland after the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. While working at Dow Chemical's laboratories, he devised a method for extending the intermediate phase of rapid hydrocarbon reactions, and found that the introduction of an extremely strong acid could preserve carbocations (ions with a positively-charged carbon atom) for as long as months. His work allowed the mass production of synthesized high-octane gasoline, and uncovered new ways for the petroleum industry to use hydrocarbons. Father: Julius Oláh (lawyer)
Mother: Magda Krasznai
Wife: Judith Lengyel (m. 1949, until his death, two sons)
Son: George John Olah (b. 1954)
Son: Ronald Peter Olah (b. 1959)
University: Piarista Gimnázium, Budapest (1945)
University: PhD Chemistry, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (1949)
Teacher: Budapest University of Technology and Economics (1949-54)
Professor: Chemistry, Case Western Reserve University (1965-67)
Professor: C.F. Mabery Dist. Prof. of Chemistry, Case Western Reserve University (1967-77)
Professor: Chemistry, University of Southern California (1977-80)
Administrator: Scientific Director, Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, University of Southern California (1977-1980)
Professor: Dist. Prof. of Organic Chemistry, University of Southern California (1980-2008)
Administrator: Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, University of Southern California (1991-)
Professor: Distinguished Professor of School of Engineering, University of Southern California (2008-)
Dow Chemical Research Chemist, Framington, MA (1964-65)
Dow Chemical Research Chemist, Sarnia, Ontario (1957-64)
Accademia dei Lincei
Hungarian Academy of Sciences Organic Chemist (1954-56)
Lee Hendrik Baekeland Award 1967
ACS Henry Morley Medal 1970
Guggenheim Fellowship 1972, 1988
California Scientist of the Year 1989
Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1994
ACS F. A. Cotton Medal 1996
ACS Arthur C. Cope Award 2001
Order of the Rising Sun 2003
Priestley Medal 2005
Hungarian Order of Pro Merit 2006
American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2002
American Chemical Society
American Philosophical Society 2002
Bush-Cheney '04
European Academy of Sciences and Arts 1989
George W. Bush for President
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Foreign Member, 1974
John McCain 2008
National Academy of Sciences 1976
Naturalized US Citizen 1970
Hungarian Ancestry
Author of books:
Carbonium Ions (1968, chemistry)
Friedel-Crafts Chemistry (1973, chemistry)
Halonium Ions (1975, chemistry)
Hypercarbon Chemistry (1987, chemistry)
Nitration: Methods and Mechanisms (1989, chemistry; with R. Malhotra and S. Narang)
Cage Hydrocarbons (1990, chemistry)
Electron Deficient Boron and Carbon Clusters (1990, chemistry; with K. Wade and R. Williams)
Chemistry of Energetic Materials (1991, chemistry; with David R. Squire)
Synthetic Fluorine Chemistry (1992, chemistry; with R. Chambers and G. K. Surya Prakash)
Hydrocarbon Chemistry (1995, chemistry; with Árpád Molnár)
Onium Ions (1998, chemistry)
Across Conventional Lines (2003, collected scientific papers)
Carbocation Chemistry (2004, chemistry; with G. K. Surya Prakash)
Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy (2005, chemistry)
Superelectrophiles and Their Chemistry (2007, chemistry; with Douglas A. Klumpp)
A Life of Magic Chemistry (2007, memoirs)
Requires Flash 7+ and Javascript.
Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile
Copyright ©2019 Soylent Communications
|
