Issue 24: March-April 2003

Famed scientist to
lecture at UNU

Ahmed Zewail

A Nobel Prize winning scientist who helped to change the way we view matter will give the fifth U Thant Distinguished Lecture at UNU Centre in Tokyo April 15. Professor Ahmed H. Zewail, 1999 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, will discuss his views on “The Future of Our World.”

Dr. Zewai holds more than 100 prizes, awards and orders from around the world. In this home country of Egypt he received the Grand Collar of the Nile, the highest state honor, and postage stamps were issued to honor his contributions to science and humanity. His received the Nobel Prize for groundbreaking work in femtoscience, making it possible to observe the movement of the individual atoms in a femtosecond, a millionth of a billionth of a second.

Dr. Zewail is currently the Linus Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics and the Director of the Laboratory for Molecular Sciences at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. Besides writing on various scientific subjects, he has also been giving lectures around on the world on his vision of a new world order, which provides concrete courses of action to help the underprivileged.

The U Thant lecture series, co-organized by the UN University Centre and the UNU Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS), is a forum where leading thinkers speak on the role of the UN in addressing the challenges facing the world in the 21st Century. Previous speakers have been Mahathir Bin Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia; Thabo Mbeki, President of the Republic of South Africa; former US President Bill Clinton and Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Father of the Green Revolution. 

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