George Andrew Olah
Olah, George Andrew (1927-), a Hungarian-born American chemist, won the 1994 Nobel Prize in chemistry. His work led to improved synthetic gasoline additives and cheaper and safer plastics and Pharmaceuticals.
The son of a lawyer, Olah matriculated at the Technical University of Budapest. He became a research assistant to Hungary's senior professor in organic chemistry. After earning his doctorate degree in 1949, Olah served as professor at the Technical University (1949–1954).
Following the Communist takeover of Hungary. Olah was invited to join the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' new Central Chemical Research Institute, where he headed an organic chemistry research group. Together with his family and many of his researchers, Olah fled Hungary in 1956, shortly after a failed popular revolt against Communist rule. He found work as a researcher with the Dow Chemical Company, first in Canada and then in the United States (1957–1965). Olah then worked at Western (now Case Western) Reserve University (1965–1977) in Cleveland. Since 1977, he has headed the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (UCLA). Primary objectives of the institute include pursuing the long-range development of hydrocarbon chemistry and seeking solutions to the world's energy and environmental problems.
While doing research on hydrocarbons, he searched for a better means of studying the breaking and reformation of chemical bonds during a chemical reaction. Scientists at the time believed that chemical reactions occurred too quickly to be observed, so that their details could be known only theoretically. Olah, however, was able to isolate carbocations—intermediate-level compounds that had never before been detectable—by dissolving hydrocarbon compounds in cold superacids a trillion times stronger than battery acid. By enabling chemists to observe hydrocarbon reactions in progress, Olah's carbocation work opened up a new branch of organic chemistry. It also led to many patents for new processes, including some for improved fuels.