"Nobel Prize in Chemistry" George Olah Signed FDC Dated 1984 Todd Mueller COA

Description

"Nobel Prize in Chemistry" George Olah Signed First Day Cover Dated 1984
.
This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-5573E
George Andrew Olah
(born
Oláh György
; May 22, 1927 – March 8, 2017) was a Hungarian and American chemist. His research involved the generation and reactivity of
carbocations
via
superacids
. For this research, Olah was awarded a
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
in 1994 "for his contribution to carbocation chemistry."
He was also awarded the
Priestley Medal
, the highest honor granted by the
American Chemical Society
and
F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research
of the
American Chemical Society
in 1996.
According to
György Marx
he was one of
The Martians
.
Olah was born in
Budapest
, Hungary, on May 22, 1927, to a Jewish couple, Magda (Krasznai) and Gyula Oláh, a lawyer. After the high school of Budapesti Piarista Gimnazium (
Scolopi fathers
), he studied under organic chemist
Géza Zemplén
at the Technical University of Budapest, now the
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
, where he earned M.S. and Ph.D degrees in Chemical Engineering. From 1949 through 1954, he taught at the school as a professor of organic chemistry. In the subsequent two years, from 1954–1956, he worked at the Research Institute of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
, where he was Associate Scientific Director and Head of the Department of Organic Chemistry.
As a result of the
1956 Hungarian Revolution
, he and his family moved briefly to England and then to Canada, where he joined
Dow Chemical
in
Sarnia
, Ontario, with another Hungarian chemist, Stephen J. Kuhn. Olah's pioneering work on carbocations started during his eight years with Dow.
In 1965, he returned to academia at
Case Western Reserve University
in Cleveland, Ohio, chairing the Department of Chemistry from 1965 to 1969, and from 1967 through 1977 he was the C. F. Maybery Distinguished Professor of Research in Chemistry.
In 1971, Olah became a
naturalized citizen
of the United States. He then moved to the
University of Southern California
in 1977.
At USC, Olah was a distinguished professor and the director of the
Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute
. Starting in 1980, he served as the Distinguished Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of Chemistry and later became a distinguished professor in USC's School of Engineering.
In 1994, Olah was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
"for his contribution to
carbocation
chemistry". In particular, Olah's search for stable nonclassical
carbocations
led to the discovery of protonated
methane
stabilized by
superacids
, like FSO
3
H-SbF
5
("
Magic Acid
").
CH
4
+ H
+
→ CH
5
+
Because these cations were able to be stabilized, scientists could now use
infrared spectroscopy
and
nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy
to study them in greater depth, as well as use them as catalysts in organic synthesis reactions.
Olah, with Canadian chemist
Saul Winstein
, was also involved in a career-long battle with
Herbert C. Brown
of
Purdue
over the existence of so-called "
nonclassical
" carbocations – such as the
norbornyl
cation, which can be depicted as cationic character delocalized over several bonds.
[16]
Olah's studies of the cation with NMR spectroscopy provided more evidence suggesting that Winstein's model of the non-classical cation, "featuring a pair of [delocalized] electrons smeared between three carbon atoms," was correct.
In 1997, the Olah family formed an
endowment fund
(the George A. Olah Endowment) which grants annual awards to outstanding chemists, including the George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry, formerly known as the ACS Award in Petroleum Chemistry. The awards are selected and administered by the
American Chemical Society
.
Later in his career, his research shifted from
hydrocarbons
and their transformation into fuel to the
methanol economy
, namely generating methanol from methane. He joined with
Robert Zubrin
,
Anne Korin
, and
James Woolsey
in promoting a flexible-fuel mandate initiative. In 2005, Olah wrote an essay promoting the methanol economy in which he suggested that methanol could be produced from
hydrogen
gas (H
2
) and industrially derived or atmospheric
carbon dioxide
(CO
2
), using energy from renewable sources to power the production process.