Interview transcript

I’m sitting here in Lindau in Southern Bavaria, this is the 50th anniversary of the Lindau so called Nobelpreisträgertagungen and I am sitting here with George Olah who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1994. I would like to ask you first, Professor Olah, could you tell us a little bit about how and why you became a scientist.

George A. Olah: I was born and grew up and lived in Hungary until I was 29. When I was growing up and going to school, I must confess I had absolutely no interest in science. As a matter of fact it never crossed my mind that science would be an area I would be involved in. I had much interest in history, literature, languages, even philosophy. At the end of World War II, in war-devastated Hungary in central Europe, when the time came to enter university, it certainly became clear to me that I’d better try to get into a profession that I also could make a living. When took my first chemistry class I fell in love with chemistry – don’t ask me why because I can’t explain why you are falling in love, but I am still in love with it. It’s maybe disappointing, but I was not one of these wunderkind who at age ten already knew exactly what he wanted to do and studied /- – -/ before this.

Maybe I should mention Eugene Wigner who was also a Hungarian born physicist. I read once he wrote about his life and when he was finishing high school his father was a businessman sat down with him and asked what he wanted to become. He said that he would like to become a theoretical physicist and his father, who I guess never had heard of theoretical physics, answered ‘And tell me how many jobs in this little country of Hungary are for theoretical physicists?’ His son, who was an honest guy, said ‘I guess two, maybe three.’ At which time the conversation was terminated his father enrolled him as a chemical engineer, but later on he shifted gears.

Can you say a few words about your family environment, what kind of family did you grew up in?

I was born in a György middle class family, my father was a lawyer and my mother was a homemaker. To my best knowledge nobody in my family ever had any interest in science. I was fortunate enough that I got a fairly schooling, education – much was said about the schools of Budapest and the number of people came out, not only in the sciences but in other areas – musicians, conductors and so on. There was a wonderful music school in Budapest, founded by Franz Liszt, but there was a number of these gymnasien – combined middle and high schools – so I have gone to one of them, not to the one where all my well-known physicist compatriots have gone, but this was run by a Catholic order called the Piarist Brothers. It was really a gear to a general education, heavily in the humanities and so on.

I never heard the name ever mentioned, and I am quite sure about it during my eight years in this school, of George de Hevesy who was a student of the same school who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry I guess in 1944 or 1945 – maybe there was some tradition, but if it was it was hidden. I guess it served me very well, that it was a very well-balanced general education. I am sorry to say I can’t remember my chemistry teacher’s name, but I remember my physics teacher whose name was Joseph /- – -/, who was a very inspiring teacher. Later I understand he became well known because he became a university professor and introduced on television popular science, in Hungary, but he certainly had a substantial influence as young boys. Also, I never considered to go into physics.

Could you say a little bit about how you came to do the work that you eventually were awarded the Nobel Prize for? Did you have any inspiration, a special idea, was there some new development of apparatus or how did it come about?

I am a chemist who is mostly interested in compounds of the element carbon which is a fairly central element on Earth. Table salt, sodium chloride, is composed of a sodium ketone positive ion and a chloride ion, but carbon compounds are supposed to be different and their ability to form ionic compounds was doubted for a long while. I was studying reactions which involved chemistry, which could have involved ionic carbon compounds – nobody really knew – it was suspected. For long years I had an interest to pursue this chemistry but also with an eye to try to find out how this really goes. It’s not a question of intuition overnight, that you wake up and you have a tremendous idea – some people may have it – it wasn’t with me, but through a fairly long struggle eventually I was lucky to find systems in which these long elusive positive ions of carbons which they call carbocations – carbon is the element and cations is the positive ions – were observable and as the Nobel Committee stated I give supposedly long life to these ions.

There were many things I don’t want to bore with chemistry, but in order to do this it was necessary to use very acidic systems which now are called superacids. When I say very acidic, say your car battery has sulphuric acid in it, and when I grew up, maybe even now in most schools, school children are taught that sulphuric acid is a strong acid. The acid in which my chemistry was possible has acidities which are say a trillion times stronger than sulphuric acid. These are very big numbers, very little meaning, I don’t know whether Sweden has any national debt to hide this, but the US has a national debt I guess of about 5 trillion dollars, so my acids are in this range.

Receiving the Nobel Prize – did that mean for you any big change in your daily life, in your direction of study or was it just another one of those prizes that you have received earlier?

Obviously, anybody who receives this prize tells you that it has an effect. Look, one thing is I wouldn’t be sitting here interviewed by you if I wouldn’t have received the Nobel Prize. On the other hand, I was quite well established in my doubt that it basically … I am still a working scientist and I still love to do this, and I’m also blessed with a wonderful wife who keeps me very down to Earth. I haven’t changed, I hope, as an individual. I work harder than ever because with the Nobel Prize are coming new responsibilities which I try to perform, but I still, my primary life hasn’t changed.

Professor Olah, would you say that your work that you received the Nobel Prize for has a special meaning, that it has a special importance for applications, for chemistry or for society?

Of course all scientists believe what they are doing is significant, but I mentioned that my work still center the chemistry of carbon compound. There was a well-known famous German chemist in the middle of the last century called Kekulé, and one of Kekulé’s major contributions to chemistry was his concept, which still is guiding, chemistry which is generally called organic chemistry, the chemistry of carbon and /- – -/ compound. The carbon can attach itself simultaneously to not more than a maximum of four other atoms or groups. In studying these positively charged species of carbon we realised through a series of investigation that with these systems carbon can attach five atoms or groups, sometimes six, and recently we showed even seven.

This doesn’t violate the fundamental rule of what in chemistry is called the octet rule, so you can’t have more than eight electrons surrounding carbon at any time, but on the other hand, if I mention the simplest carbon hydrating compound, hydrocarbon, is methane, CH4. With our very strong acids we can attach a proton to methane and CH5+ is not a fictional species anymore, it’s a very realistic and quite intriguing species which has substantial bearing on fundamental chemistry in general, but in a practical way. This chemistry opened up possibilities to activate and react hydrocarbons, natural gas, and all are really just mixtures of hydrocarbons. The chemistry we developed and are still developing, to take say methane, a natural gas, and transform it into all kinds of useful products through this new type of chemistry.

What did you think about when you first received the news of your Nobel Prize?

You know it’s a time difference – this was early in the morning – we are early risers so we were up and having breakfast and you get this proverbial phone call. Obviously, it takes a while to sink in. You are obviously gratified and elated – you really don’t know what this all means – and then all hell broke loose. Then we had this wonderful week in Stockholm when we were floating on adrenaline – it takes a while that it settles in. I already told you that it is a wonderful gratifying thing, on the other hand you should keep your proportion. The fact that you get a prize really isn’t making you overnight some type of a different person.

Do you think you could say three words to describe yourself?

Three, it may be five. I am a human being interested in science. In the sequence. The second one is that I learned one thing very useful, it is that I gladly admit how little I know. The third one is that whereas that you don’t plan that your work has practical uses it’s a great pleasure when you can apply some of your knowledge to do something which may be useful for the future.

What do you do when you relax?

My wife sits here so I must be very careful answering you. I am blessed with a wonderful family and we have two wonderful grandchildren, but I must tell you that I am still a very hard worker. My life is around science, although one thing the prize did to me was that my wife and some friends convinced me to write something which was originally supposed to be about my life experience, but it ended up to a great degree about reflections. I told you I was much interested, growing up, in many things, so I spent five years really reading very hard, filling in lots of gaps – not the chemistry but science, philosophy, history and so on – and I greatly enjoyed doing this.

Have you written it? Is it published?

It should come out this year. As it happened the great Greek thinker /- – -/ they were able to cover everything, the physical world and the spiritual world. Then things became very complicated. By the end of the 19th century many philosophers really gave up because I guess they tried to avoid to be embarrassed about the limited knowledge of the physical world. Then, it looks like that physicists – please forgive me mentioning this – particularly practical physicists took over and they believe they have all the answers. I personally believe we probably never will have all the answers, but maybe a few chemists, Eigen and Prigogine and others express some views, not too many, so I try to put in my /- – -/, maybe a big failure but I enjoyed doing it.

Do you teach at all, and if you teach – do you think that teaching gives you something back?

I still teach, and I love teaching. It may surprise you, but I am teaching presently in this fall again, undergraduates, on a topic which is concerned with the relationship between science, arts and even economics. Whereas it is a very informal course, the text we are using is Goethe’s Faust as something which was written by a great poet. The story, at least the first part, is a chemist story, or an alchemist story, and the second part is that whereas the alchemist couldn’t make gold, but paper money was about invented at the time and he puts paper money instead of gold saying that from nothing some value is created. I enjoyed it very much and I learned more than my students.

Thank you very much. The goal of conversation for your life as a scientist – do you think conversation with others is an important factor for your scientific work?

It is absolutely important. I was never fortunate enough to have been in a milieu /- – -/ than in an institution which was one of the leading outstanding institutions in the world. Scientifically, I am a grandson of Emil Fischer who was one of the great organic chemists of our time, and my professor brought back to little Hungary some of Fischer’s concepts. That is for any scientist essential to have contact, free exchange and as we said ‘kicking around ideas’. You do this all the time with your students. I consider the greatest blessing to be a university professor. It keeps you young, your students are your wider scientific family and in this given /- – -/ I hope that I am inspiring them a little. At the same time they keep me active and going.

Can you give an example of a creative milieu – an example, you don’t have to define it. Can you think of some place?

Obviously there are wonderful creative milieus because there are these wonderful schools and centers of culture and so on. As I told you I never was lucky enough, so I needed to create my own milieu. Maybe I am strong, /- – -/ and lucky but I was able to do it and I have my students today, in a small way, I can too provide. I think my role as a professor is a catalyst and somebody who tries to provide them a milieu where they can pursue their work and study relatively shielded from what they will later be exposed into.

It is said that mathematics is beautiful. Is there a beauty also in chemistry?

The beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For me, certainly there is. Mathematics I guess is a universal language of all the sciences. For mathematics I think you must have some born talent. I am not so sure for chemistry you need to have a born talent. Probably it’s helpful that you need to have an enquiring mind. Creativity I think, what we discussed, is to me very difficult to define, because if somebody can define creativity, he or she is probably isn’t very creative. I think an artist or a great painter, sculptor can define for you or you never think the word creativity. But to me chemistry certainly has a great degree of beauty. There are people who find symmetry and write books about it, but to me the beauty is that if you find out some underlined principles then you can build on it. It’s a wonderful experience.

Why are so many Nobel Laureates of Hungarian origin?

I can’t answer you. I don’t think there are special Hungarian genes for science or music or whatever. Probably, and this is only … I never knew the rest of Hungary, only Budapest. Probably in part, it was due to the fact that there were some good schools, there was a basis for it. Many of the Hungarian scientists /- – -/ got recognition did their work outside of Hungary. Albert Szent-Györgyi worked there and I did at least my initial work in Hungary. Being in a small country maybe there is this extra initiative that you try to prove that even in a small poor country you can do something. But I really don’t think that Hungarians are very different from anybody else, we are all human beings.

Did you find any typos in this text? We would appreciate your assistance in identifying any errors and to let us know. Thank you for taking the time to report the errors by sending us an e-mail.