When they called me with the Nobel call from Secretary General of the Swedish Academy it was twenty minutes to six and he said well that was well hope I'm not disturbing you but I am the Secretary General of the Swedish Academy. Of course you can imagine I was frozen in time when he said that but then he made a very famous statement, something to the effect that this is the last 20 minutes of peace of your life.

Ahmed H. Zewail

Categorized in : Twenties Lasts Six

I don't know all the reasons for these achievements, but I know that I love what I do and I have never wanted to rest on my laurels.

Ahmed H. Zewail

achievement knowing science

Perhaps the most valuable thing he taught me (his father) was that there is no contradiction between devotion to work and enjoyment of life and people

Ahmed H. Zewail

taught father people

Everybody thinks some times that science is done as a master plan and that somebody like me came from Mars and figured out everything and so on, but that's really not the way it worked.

Ahmed H. Zewail

mars done thinking

Invest in basic research and recruit the best minds.

Ahmed H. Zewail

recruit research mind

When I was a child, I thought of my Delta town as the center of the universe, but now I realize how little I know about the universe. As a child, I thought I was immortal, but now I recognize how limited a time we all have. As a child, success meant scoring A on every exam, but now I take it to mean good health, close family and friends, achieve- ments in my work, and helping others.

Ahmed H. Zewail

helping-others mean children

Think about the whole world of biological complex sciences. We still don't understand the way a protein folds the way it does.

Ahmed H. Zewail

doe world thinking

Human resources are just tremendous in Egypt but we need the science base.

Ahmed H. Zewail

egypt resources needs

We still don't understand how the big bang and evolving all the way to the human species and so on. So all of this is going to be a very, very exciting to the new people.

Ahmed H. Zewail

bangs people way

One of the things I enjoy most is to be left alone with a book.

Ahmed H. Zewail

left-alone enjoy book

I came from Egypt and I owe Egypt a lot to what I am now.

Ahmed H. Zewail

egypt

I want to really focus on doing this two things I really would like to focus on science and the excitement of science and to help with science. So, that's my intention to focus my efforts there and I hope I will be able to do so.

Ahmed H. Zewail

effort focus two

There are many, many books I've read and I think this is quite naïve actually because we all just try to uncover something. But the universe at large is full of questions that we still don't know anything about and there will be always young people brilliant who are going to make new discoveries.

Ahmed H. Zewail

discovery book thinking

You should have some time to think and that's very important.

Ahmed H. Zewail

important should-have thinking

I do feel quite strongly about this that probably one of the things that unfortunately this age now to get a Nobel Prize is to really use part of it to help the young people get excited about science.

Ahmed H. Zewail

use age people

Syria is the proud heir of an ancient civilization that has a unique spectrum of minorities that encompasses Muslims and Christians of various denominations. There are at least ten such ethnic and religious groups.

Ahmed H. Zewail

unique religious christian

There is a danger one has to really be knowing much more because you can't be too narrow on science.

Ahmed H. Zewail

knowing danger

Scientists contribute in a variety of ways and I don't think I can singular one even including [Albert] Einstein, that I can say that he's the best. We don't work like the best basketball player and the best musician and so on. Science is a collective effort.

Ahmed H. Zewail

basketball player thinking

If you like, there is a Guinness time. The reason for that it's fundamental. It is not that we have to keep shortening the time. It turns out all molecular and biological systems have speeds of the atoms move inside them, the fastest possible speeds are determined by their molecular vibrations and this speeds is about a kilometre per second.

Ahmed H. Zewail

atoms fundamentals moving

I think the Nobel Prize helps for a number of reasons. Number one, if I can be frank, there is these people will feel by getting a Nobel Prize that I'm one of them, that it is possible to contribute on the world map of science and technology. And the other thing also which I'm hoping for is that the government in Egypt is willing and interested in promoting science and technology and this is an ideal time now to be able to do something.

Ahmed H. Zewail

technology government thinking

I thought in my Nobel Lecture I pointed that I was delighted that the Swedish Academy of Science did not quote anything about my current work right now, because the current work that my group is focusing on is actually both the time resolve electrons and possibly x-rays to be able to get the architecture of these molecules, the molecular structures themselves, of very complex biological systems. That's the ultimate goal.

Ahmed H. Zewail

rays groups goal