George Andrew Olah Biography - Nobel Prize Winner (1994)

George Andrew Olah (born May 22, 1927 as György Oláh) is a Hungarian-born American chemist. He was significant in stabilizing and in studying carbocations. He won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1994. In 2005 he was awarded the Priestley Medal, the highest honor granted by the American Chemical Society.

Olah studied, then taught, at what is now Budapest University of Technology and Economics. 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. Olah's pioneering work on carbocations started during his eight years with Dow. In 1965 he returned to academia at Case Western Reserve University and then to University of Southern California in 1977. In 1971, Olah became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Olah is currently a distinguished professor at the University of Southern California and the director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. In 2005, Olah wrote an essay promoting the methanol economy. His book The Methanol Economy is available now at Wiley at Keplers, amazon.comand other bookstores.