Prof Ahmed Zewail, who won a Nobel Prize for finding a way to photograph atoms, has turned his mind to global inequality and conflict, he tells Dick Ahlstrom.
The scientist who made time stand still is unique in a number of ways. He is the only Egyptian (indeed the only Arab) recipient of a Nobel Prize in science. He is apolitical but is highly politicised when speaking about world inequality and injustice. He is also steeped in the specialised language of his complex research but can still speak in terms that a lay audience can understand.
Prof Ahmed Zewail last week received an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin in recognition of his 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Linus Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry, professor of physics and director of the US National Science Foundation lab for Molecular Sciences in the California Institute of Technology found time while in Dublin to deliver a free public lecture on the meaning of time.
"I like the public lectures," he says. His typically either describe highly complex science in layman's language or "talk to society about society," he says. Favourite themes in the latter group are the supposed conflict of cultures and religions and "the world of the have-nots".
Zewail was born 58 years ago in Damanhour, a city outside Alexandra in Egypt. He received his prize for "femtoscience", ground-breaking work that has allowed researchers to make time stand still and take pictures of atoms and molecules.
He did his undergraduate work at the University of Alexandria and followed up with an MSc in just eight months. "I decided after that to go to the US," he says - no trivial decision in 1969 given the tensions that followed the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
He did a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and postdoctoral work at USC Berkeley before landing in Caltech where he has remained since. "I was interested in asking the question, 'How can we use lasers to follow the dynamics of atoms and molecules, how they move and the time scales in which they move?'" he says.
At the time, laser bursts as short as a billionth of a second were the technological limit, but this was hopelessly slow when talking about watching atoms move, says Zewail. He developed methods to get laser light bursts down to "femtoseconds", a millionth of a billionth of a second.
"By going down to femtoseconds we were able . . . to photograph the atom in motion. We were able to uncover a whole new world. You can now freeze atoms in time and watch their interaction."
He is passionate about science but equally passionate about the importance of finding a science-like balance in the world of politics. He doesn't see himself as political, however.
"I do not want to be in politics and I never wanted a position that could be controlled by politics," he says. "I wish to make my impact on society through science. I think science provides us with a natural way of thinking. It is an international language that can help unite us."
The offers flooded in immediately after his Nobel award but he decided on three things he particularly wanted to do. "I wanted to continue as a research scientist. I wanted to go around the world and across the US to excite young people about science. I enjoy giving lectures and talking to them."
His third choice was more difficult. "A huge concern for me was the question of how we help the developed world. What can we do new and important that can help the lives of people that need our help," he says.
"We live in a world of six billion, we all have the same DNA. The fundamental question is how can we live together peacefully."
Of the world's population, 4.8 billion live in the developing world. "You have to ask the question how can the minority in the developed world survive if the rest of the world cannot live as comfortably as we do. I don't believe it is a conflict of civilisations or a conflict of religions. There is no physics in it. I can prove there is no conflict in there," he says emphatically.
What then is it if not a conflict of culture? Zewail suggests it starts with modern communications and ends up with discontent and a sense of injustice.
"It is based in economical disparity," he says. "Technology allows people to see each other instantly. People in Africa can see you living well in Ireland. Information technology has transformed the globe into a village. That allows people to see a huge economic disparity. There are billions with no access to clean water but they can see countries where they have two showers a day."
This causes a lot of discontent. "They feel they are being exploited," he says. "The second issue is political injustice. People are very sensitive about political decisions that are not made in a balanced way."
A major issue for him is instability in the Middle East. "We must solve the Palestinian-Israeli problem. The Palestinians don't ever see any light for the future. The world should pay more attention to these problems so we could have some stability in the world.
"It is important to get these problems out of the way so genuine global issues can be tackled, he believes. "The major issues we need to deal with are hunger in the world at large, the environment of our planet, human health. Viruses cross the globe quickly and we can't keep them out. All of these are important for our survival. These are global issues we have to be united about People may say this is too idealistic but we can't survive if we cannot find the means to live together."