| RefNo | EC/1997/45 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Olah, George Andrew: certificate of election to the Royal Society |
| Date | 1995 |
| Description | Certificate of Candidate for Election to Foreign Membership. Citation typed on separate piece of paper, then pasted onto certificate |
| Citation | The chemistry of carbocations and George A. Olah are synonymous. His unshared receipt of the 1994 Nobel Prize in chemistry reflects the significance of his work in this area. Whereas the existience of carbocations was deduced indirectly over the years by kinetic studies (Meerwein, Ingold), direct observation, aside from the very stable triarylmethyl cation, awaited the pioneering work of Olah. In addition to species based on the parent CH3+, carbocations based on the hypercoordinate parent CH5+ were realized by Olah. The latter type of carbonium carbocation became differentiated from the three coordinate carbenium carbocation and led to structural characterization of both species in many laboratories world-wide. As a result of Olah's work, hypercarbon chemistry is a well-defined part of modern organic chemistry. Through his pioneering work on the electrophilic chemistry of alkanes, methane has become a building block for higher hydrocarbons. In order to develop this electophilic chemistry, new superacid systems were required and studied. As a result, Olah has made significant contribution to the understanding of inorganic superacid systems such as antimony pentafluoride, niobium and tantalum pentafluorides and the related fluorosulphates and triflates. These superacid systems led to the formation and study of other new cationic species such as halonium ions, oxonium and carbooxonium and paved the way for the strudy of oxonium and halonium ylides.
Olah's contributions are not limited to the cationic chemistry of carbon and the development of the related hydrocarbon chemistry. Indeed, nitronium and hydroperoxonium chemistry flowed out of this work as did new acid systems such as liquid pyridine polyhydrogen fluoride, a catalyst in the environmentally safe manufacture of high octane petrol. In summary, George Olah's pioneering chemistry has cut across conventional boundaries of inorganic and organic chemistry and leaves a lasting impact on the entire discipline.
In addition to the prolific publication of over 1000 research papers, Olah holds 100 patents, and is the author of co-author of 15 books and monogrphs. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he is winner of the American Chemical Society's awards for Petroleum Chemistry, Synthetic Organic Chemistry and the Roger Adam's Medal, as well as other significant prizes. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and has received four honorary doctoral degrees including one from the University of Durham. |
| AccessStatus | Closed |
Fellows associated with this archive
| Code | PersonName | Dates |
| NA4708 | Olah; George Andrew (1927 - 2017) | 1927 - 2017 |