Home > Author > Ahmed H. Zewail
1 " I don't know all the reasons for these achievements, but I know that I love what I do and I have never wanted to rest on my laurels. "
― Ahmed H. Zewail , رحلة عبر الزمن
2 " When I was a child, I thought of my Delta town as the center of theuniverse, but now I realize how little I know about the universe. As achild, I thought I was immortal, but now I recognize how limited a timewe all have. As a child, success meant scoring A on every exam, butnow I take it to mean good health, close family and friends, achieve-ments in my work, and helping others. "
3 " Perhaps the most valuable thing he taught me (his father) wasthat there is no contradiction between devotion to work and enjoymentof life and people "
4 " Interestingly, this was the only incident of blatant prejudice that I canremember. But I am aware that such opinions exist in human beings, andit's not a question of being Egyptian or being an Arab or being a Muslim.One could be a Christian against a Jew or a Jew against a Christian, or awhite against a black, or a man against a woman. My philosophy is notto let such attitudes stop me from what I want to do. I don't take it veryseriously, although as you can see, I remember the incident very well.The point was I had to get on with my work and had to behave properly,and in the process perhaps even change the opinion of these people. Buton the other hand, if I did nothing but complain and feel sorry for myself,then I wouldn't get anywhere. "
5 " in my first Americanclass—a freshman chemistry class during the 1969-70 academic year—they looked at me as though I was supposed to be their nurse becausethey were paying a stiff tuition. That's another concept I had to learn—in American private schools we worked for them because they paid thetuition, but in Egypt we were educating them. "
6 " Egypt is the gift of the Nile, as the Greek historian Herodotus said many centuries ago, in about 450 BC. "
7 " The prefix milli comes from Latin (and French for “thousandth”), micro and nano from Greek (for “small” and “dwarf respectively), and pico from Spanish (for “small”). Femto is Scandinavian, the root of the word for “fifteen” (femten)—nuclear physicists call a femtometer, the unit for the dimensions of atomic nuclei, a fermi. Attosecond, the next smaller unit, 10-18 second, uses a prefix also derived from Scandinavian, from the word for “eighteen. "
8 " Preserving knowledge is easy. Transferring knowledge is also easy. But making new knowledge is neither easy nor profitable in the short term. Fundamental research proves profitable in the long run, and, as importantly, it is a force that enriches the culture of any society with reason and basic truth. "
― Ahmed H. Zewail
