Gabor A. Somorjai (born May 4, 1935) is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

of chemistry at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, and is a leading researcher in the field of

surface chemistry Surface science is the study of physical and chemical phenomena that occur at the interface of two phases, including solid–liquid interfaces, solid– gas interfaces, solid–vacuum interfaces, and liquid– gas interfaces. It includes the fi ...

and

catalysis Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

, especially the catalytic effects of metal surfaces on gas-phase reactions ("heterogeneous catalysis"). For his contributions to the field, Somorjai won the

Wolf Prize in Chemistry The Wolf Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics and Arts ...

in 1998, the

Linus Pauling Award The Linus Pauling Award is an award recognizing outstanding achievement in chemistry. It is awarded annually by thePuget SoundOregon
an

in 2000, the

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

in 2002, the Priestley Medal in 2008, the 2010

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards () are an international award programme recognizing significant contributions in the areas of scientific research and cultural creation. The categories that make up the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ...

in Basic Science and the NAS Award in Chemical Sciences in 2013. In April 2015, Somorjai was awarded the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

's William H. Nichols Medal.

Early history

Somorjai was born in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

in 1935 to

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

parents. He was saved from the Nazis when his mother sought the assistance of

Raoul Wallenberg Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg (4 August 1912 – disappeared 17 January 1945)He is presumed to have died in 1947, although the circumstances of his death are not clear and this date has been disputed. Some reports claim he was alive years later. 31 J ...

in 1944 who issued Swedish passports to Somorjai's mother, himself and his sister saving them from the Nazi death camps. While Somorjai's father ended up in the camp system, he was fortunate to survive but many of Somorjai's extended family ended up in the camp system. He was studying chemical engineering at the

Budapest University of Technology and Economics The Budapest University of Technology and Economics ( hu, Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem or in short ), official abbreviation BME, is the most significant university of technology in Hungary and is considered the world's olde ...

in 1956. As a participant in the

1956 Hungarian Revolution The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hung ...

, Somorjai left Hungary to go to the US after the Soviet invasion. Along with other Hungarian immigrants, Somorjai enrolled in graduate study at Berkeley and obtained his doctorate in 1960. He joined IBM's research staff in

Yorktown Heights, New York Yorktown Heights is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 1,781 at the 2010 census. History Yorktown Heights is in the town of Yorktown, New York, in northern ...

for a few years but returned to Berkeley as an assistant professor in 1964.

Chemical research

The introduction of new technology such as

low-energy electron diffraction Low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) is a technique for the determination of the surface structure of single-crystalline materials by bombardment with a collimated beam of low-energy electrons (30–200 eV) and observation of diffracted el ...

revolutionised the study of surfaces in the 1950s and 1960s. However, early studies were limited to surfaces such as silicon, important for its electrical properties. In contrast, Somorjai was interested in surfaces such as

platinum Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver". Pla ...

known for its chemical properties. Somorjai discovered that the defects on surfaces are where

catalytic Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

reactions take place. When these defects break, new bonds are formed between atoms leading to complex organic compounds such as

naphtha Naphtha ( or ) is a flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture. Mixtures labelled ''naphtha'' have been produced from natural gas condensates, petroleum distillates, and the distillation of coal tar and peat. In different industries and regions ' ...

to be converted into gasoline as an example. These findings led to greater understanding of subjects such as adhesion, lubrication, friction and adsorption. His research also has important implications such as nanotechnology. In the 1990s, Somorjai started working with physicist Y. R. Shen on developing a technique known as

Sum Frequency Generation Spectroscopy Sum frequency generation spectroscopy (SFG) is a nonlinear laser spectroscopy technique used to analyze surfaces and interfaces. It can be expressed as a sum of a series of Lorentz oscillators. In a typical SFG setup, two laser beams mix at an in ...

to study surface reactions without the need for a vacuum chamber. He is also studying surface reactions in nanotechnology at the atomic and molecular level using atomic force microscopy and

scanning tunnelling microscopy A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. ...

, both of which can be used without vacuum. Somorjai's expertise in surfaces was used as a consultant to the

2002 Winter Olympics The 2002 Winter Olympics, officially the XIX Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Salt Lake 2002 ( arp, Niico'ooowu' 2002; Gosiute Shoshoni: ''Tit'-so-pi 2002''; nv, Sooléí 2002; Shoshoni: ''Soónkahni 2002''), was an internation ...

where he gave advice on how to make ice-skating surfaces as fast as possible. Somorjai's research had shed new light on ice, demonstrating that skaters skated on a top-layer of rapidly vibrating molecules, rather than on a layer of liquid water on top of the ice acting as a lubricant, which had previously been the generally accepted explanation for the slipperiness of ice. During his career, Somorjai has published more than one thousand papers and three textbooks on surface chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis. He is now the most-often cited person in the fields of surface chemistry and catalysis.

Honors and awards

Somorjai was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979 and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 1983. He was awarded the Wolf Foundation Prize in Chemistry in 1998 for his contribution to chemistry, sharing the honor with Professor

Gerhard Ertl Gerhard Ertl (; born 10 October 1936) is a German physicist and a Professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Chemistry, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany. Ertl's research laid the foundation of modern su ...

of the Fritz-Haber Institute in Berlin. Somorjai was awarded the

for his contribution as a chemist in 2002. The

has also awarded him the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry and the Adamson Award in Surface Chemistry. In 2002, he was awarded the status of University Professor across the University of California network, an honor he shares with two dozen other academics. In 2004 he won the F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the

. In 2008 he received the Priestley Medal, the highest award of the

, for his "extraordinarily creative and original contributions to surface science and catalysis". In 2009 he was named a Miller Senior Fellow of the

Miller Institute The Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science was established on the University of California, Berkeley, campus in 1955 after Adolph C. Miller and his wife, Mary Sprague Miller, made a donation to the university. It was their wish that the d ...

at the University of California Berkeley. He was awarded the prestigious 201
BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Science
In addition he was also awarded in 2010 the ENI New Frontiers of Hydrocarbons Prize and the Honda Prize. The recipient of the 2007

Nobel Prize in Chemistry ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...

, and other members of the surface science community, were surprised and mystified by the Nobel Prize committee's decision to pass over Somorjai, awarding the prize for surface-chemistry to Ertl alone. In 2009 Somorjai was recipient of the Reed M. Izatt and James J. Christensen Lectureship. In 2013 Somorjai was awarded the National Academy of Sciences NAS Award in Chemical Sciences. In April 2015, Somorjai was awarded the

's William H. Nichols Medal. Most recently, in 2023, Somorjai was recipient of the

Enrico Fermi Award The Enrico Fermi Award is a scientific award conferred by the President of the United States. It is awarded to honor scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. It was establ ...

along with

Darleane C. Hoffman Darleane Christian Hoffman (born November 8, 1926) is an American nuclear chemist who was among the researchers who confirmed the existence of Seaborgium, element 106. She is a faculty senior scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrenc ...

The Somorjai Award

The Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis, consisting of US$5,000 and a certificate, is given annually to recognize outstanding research in the field of

. The award is sponsored by the Gabor A. and Judith K. Somorjai Endowment Fund. Previous recipients have been :

The Gabor A. and Judith K. Somorjai Visiting Miller Professorship Award

Established in 2011, the Gabor A. and Judith K. Somorjai Visiting Miller Professorship Award is one of the programs of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California Berkeley. The Somorjais' wishes in the establishment of this award is to support visiting scientists in the broad field of chemical sciences for a one-month term in the Miller Institute. The first award was granted in 2013 to Angelos Michaelides. Recipients include :

Footnotes

General references

Berkeley Campus News article on Somorjai

* ttp://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/press/11090.htm Raoul Wallenberg Centre media release on the Wolf Chemistry Prize
Somorjai Research Group website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Somorjai, Gabor A. 1935 births Living people IBM employees Hungarian chemists Hungarian emigrants to Sweden Hungarian Jews Jewish chemists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences National Medal of Science laureates Swedish chemists Swedish Jews UC Berkeley College of Chemistry faculty Wolf Prize in Chemistry laureates Enrico Fermi Award recipients Fellows of the American Physical Society