OLA George

OLA, GEORGE (Olah, George) (p. 1927) (USA). Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1994.
George Olah was born in Budapest on May 22, 1927. Parents called Julius Olah and Magda Krasznai. Father was a lawyer. Ola was typical for the middle class in Europe at the time schooling in a Catholic school with Latin, German and French. In high school Ola interested mainly humanities, history, literature, etc..

After school and survived the hardships of war in Budapest, Ola began to study chemistry for university admission.

Subsequent studies at Budapest Technical University has been thorough. Organic chemistry is particularly interested in him, and he began working as an assistant to Professor Gц?za Zemplц?n, which, in turn, studied under Nobel laureate E. Fisher. Zemplц?n was the founder of School of Organic Chemistry in Hungary. Zemplц?n studied chemistry of carbohydrates, particularly interested him glycosides. However Ola with his permission was independently engage in derivatives of fluorine chemistry. His publications have appeared in the early 50's, attracted the attention of a specialist in carbocation H. Meervayna, which corresponded Ola.

Hungarian education system was then reorganized on the Soviet model. Scientific research in universities almost ceased to be conducted, and research institutes are logged in the Academy of Sciences. Ola was invited to work in the newly opened Central Chemical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where in 1954 he was able to organize a small research group to conduct work on organic chemistry.

After the Hungarian uprising in October 1956 Ola with my family and the majority of staff in early December 1956 he emigrated to the West, first in London and then in the spring of 1957, in Canada. K. Ingold famous chemist and Nobel laureate Alexander Todd greatly helped him in this difficult time. During this period, in the late 50's, began his study of stable carbocations.

In the 30's chemists have found that many organic reactions must take place through the intermediate formation of carbocations. But the time of their lives are so few, and they appear in such small concentrations that observe them directly using physical methods can not. The reason for this - extremely high reactivity in relation to the surrounding solvent molecules and negative ions - nucleophilic.

Ola was able to successfully generate, explore and then recombine carbocations, using for this purpose superacids and strongly chilled solvents.

Ola has managed to increase the lifetime of the carbocations and therefore unable to directly observe. In 60-ies Ola, like many other chemists, trying to find alkilkationy. For this purpose he undertook a reaction with tret.butilftorida superacids at -78 б° C. Superacid - this is acid stronger than 100% sulfuric acid. Superacid for protonation of alkanes can be made of HF, increasing its acidity by adding a strong Lewis acid, such as antimony pentafluoride (SbF5). Superacid may be more than 1018 times stronger than 100% sulfuric acid. Solvents which are used for such purposes - a substance with an extremely low basicity, for example, SO2, SO2C1F and SO2F2.

As a result, the scientists had received long-lived tret.butil-cation, which could be examined by physical methods, for example, using the method of nuclear magnetic resonance. It was a great achievement. It is now possible to study the structure and dynamics of transformation of almost any carbocations.

For example, methane, as shown independently by Ola and the Dutch chemist H. Hogeveen, under the action of a mixture of HF бЇ SbF5 becomes a cation CH5 +. And his education is a new transformation - the loss of a hydrogen molecule with the conversion of methyl cation. Methyl cation, in turn, attacks the molecule of methane and the result is a particle of protonated ethane. Consequently, it became possible to synthesize higher hydrocarbons from the lower.

Now known for many thousands of these cations, and among them are many very interesting structures.

Knowing how to look carbocations and how they react, you can control their transformations so as to achieve the desired products, such as drugs for the regulation of any vital chemical processes.

Discovery Ola initiated the emergence of a new branch of organic chemistry and led to the creation of new fuels and high-octane gasoline.

The spring of 1964 Ola moved to the Eastern research laboratories of the same company, located in Framingheme (Massachusetts, USA), and then moved to the laboratory Weiland - a suburb of Boston. The summer of 1965 he became professor and chair of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (Ohio).

The years spent in Cleveland, were the most fruitful. Located next to the Chemistry Department of the West University and Case Institute of Technology have been merged Ola in 1967, and this new department he led until 1969

. In 1977 Ola moved to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, . At the University the same year was opened Lokerovsky Research Institute hydrocarbons (Locker - blagotovoriteli, . whose funds helped to create institute), . which could be carried out extensive studies of hydrocarbons,
. The Institute provides its own building and equipment. Ola in 1980 became its director.

The Nobel Prize was awarded to Olah in 1994 'for his contribution to the chemistry of carbocations'.