George Andrew Olah

George Andrew Olah ( May 22nd, 1927 in Budapest) is an American chemist of Hungarian origin.

Life

Olah grew up in Hungary and studied at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. As a result of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he went with his family to the UK, and shortly thereafter to Canada. There, since 1957, he worked at Dow Chemical in Sarnia, Ontario. Olah's pioneering work on carbocation chemistry began during these eight years at Dow. In 1965 he went to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, before he moved to the University of Southern California in 1977. In 1971 he was naturalized in the United States.

He is Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and Director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. In recent years, he propagated prominently the introduction of a methanol economy, is as clean and efficient energy carrier to replace inexpensive oil and gas in the methanol. In particular, methanol should be synthesized with the help of renewable energy sources.

Olah in 1994 the Nobel Prize for Chemistry awarded for his work in the field of carbocations. In 2005 he received the Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society.

According to him, the George A. Olah Award is named in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry, ACS Award in Petroleum Chemistry previously, the Olah was awarded himself in 1964.

Work areas

Reaction Mechanisms, substitution reactions, carbocations, nonclassical ions, onium compounds (such as a carbocation compounds) reactive intermediates, Friedel -Crafts reactions, organic metal and fluorine compounds, superacids

Works (selection)

• G. A. Olah et al. Onium ion, Wiley, 1998.
• GA Olah: A Life of Magic Chemistry, John Wiley & Sons, 2001.
• GA Olah, A. Molnar: Hydrocarbon Chemistry, 2nd Aufl, Wiley, 2003.
• GA Olah, GK Surya Prakash: carbocation Chemistry, Wiley, 2004.
• GA Olah, A. Goeppert, Surya Prakash: Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, Wiley -VCH, Weinheim 2005, ISBN 978-3-527-31275-7, ISBN 3-527-31275-7